"Imperceptible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... near the coast, it became now very obvious she was driven by a current that set along the land, but which, it was probable, had set towards it more in the offing. The imperceptible drift between the observation of the previous day and the discovery of the coast, had sufficed to carry the vessel a great distance; and to this simple cause, coupled perhaps with some neglect in the steerage during the past night, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... (Avidya) is the soul. Acts constitute the seed that is placed in that soil. Desire is the water that causes that seed to grow, in this way they explain rebirth. They maintain that that ignorance being ingrained in an imperceptible way, one mortal body being destroyed, another starts up immediately from it; and that when it is burnt by the aid of knowledge, the destruction of existence itself follows or the person attains to what is called Nirvana. This opinion also is erroneous. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Orion and the splendid Dog Star guided his steps toward the pole of Cassiopeia. He admired those vast globes of light, which appear to our eyes but as so many little sparks, while the earth, which in reality is only an imperceptible point in nature, appears to our fond imaginations as ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... the crystal summit ridges delighted us as did the changing waters in the path of the steamer. Following immediately upon the transparency preserved to a depth of some eighty feet, a blur passed over the surface. This changed by imperceptible degrees to a light green. The green, again, speedily deepened, shading into a light blue; and finally, in deepest water (where the Lake is all but fathomless), the color becomes so densely blue that we could not believe our eyes. Indigo itself was outdone. ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... upon him; but she would not meet her cousin's true eyes, nor would she grant me one minute apart from the rest in which I could utter my fears or demand the breaking of that spell whose effects were so visible, even if its workings were secret and imperceptible. But at last the stomacher was finished, and as it dropped from her hands I threw myself at her feet, and from this position, looking into her ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... dog—who now betrayed impatience and a certain human infirmity of temper. The concealment they were resigned to, the sufferings they mutely accepted, he alone resented! When certain scents or sounds, imperceptible to their senses, were blown across their path, he would, with bristling back, snarl himself into guttural and strangulated fury. Yet, in their apathy, even this would have passed them unnoticed, but that on the second night he disappeared suddenly, returning after ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... would have been as cold and proud as possible, if he had been assailed by coarse and direct flattery, was yet by no means steeled against the refined and almost imperceptible flattery of Emelie, who, with all her peculiar gifts of soul and understanding, made herself subordinate to him, in order to be ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... unlovely as unloved. It is for the future you have cause to fear,—a future for which you are preparing gloom and dislike by the habits you are now forming in the small details of daily life, as well as in the pleasurable excitements of social intercourse. As I said before, these, at present almost imperceptible, habits are unheeded by those who are only your acquaintance: but they are not the less sowing the seeds of future unhappiness for you. You will, assuredly, at some period or other, reap in dislike what you are now sowing in selfishness. If, however, the ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... out of the window. All was dark and silent, the black shadows thrown by the moonlight seeming full of a silent mystery of their own. Not a thing seemed to be stirring, but all to be grim and fixed as death or fate, so that a thin streak of white mist, that crept with almost imperceptible slowness across the grass towards the house, seemed to have a sentience and a vitality of its own. I think that the digression of my thoughts must have done me good, for when I got back to bed I found a lethargy creeping over me. I lay a while, ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... formed a blurred mosaic of cream, slate, indigo, and dull reds and browns, above which slender rose-flushed spires and towers pierced the haze, stained in countless places by pillars of black, grey, and amber smoke, and lightened by plumes and jets of silvery steam, till all blended by imperceptible gradations into a sky of tenderest gold slashed with ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... all here," said Caderousse, briskly. He fetched from an old secretary a sheet of white paper and pen and ink. "Here," said Caderousse, "draw me all that on the paper, my boy." Andrea took the pen with an imperceptible smile and began. "The house, as I said, is between the court and the garden; in this way, do you see?" Andrea drew the garden, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... hastened by the heir's want of discretion and his failure to adjust difficulties amicably. That small shadow, followed by a smaller shadow, passing through the field, were none other than Oly-koeks and Oloffe, who grew more and more imperceptible until they were finally swallowed up and seemingly lost forever in the darkness of the fringe of ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... The elderly officer had dined to repletion and drank well too. The woman had roused herself; she was plainly urging him to come on out; and as Peter glanced over, she made an all but imperceptible sign to a waiter, who bustled forward with the man's cap and stick. He took them stupidly, and the woman helped him up, but not too noticeably. Together they made for the door, which the waiter held wide open. The woman tipped him, ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... becomes cold and assumes a blue or purple hue, the skin is dry, sodden and wrinkled, indicating the intense draining away of the fluids of the body, the features are pinched and the eyes deeply sunken, the pulse at the wrist is imperceptible, and the voice is reduced to a hoarse whisper (the vox cholerica). There is complete suppression of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... minikin[obs3], miniature, pygmy, pigmy[obs3], elfin; undersized; dwarf, dwarfed, dwarfish; spare, stunted, limited; cramp, cramped; pollard, Liliputian, dapper, pocket; portative[obs3], portable; duodecimo[obs3]; dumpy, squat; short &c. 201. impalpable, intangible, evanescent, imperceptible, invisible, inappreciable, insignificant, inconsiderable, trivial; infinitesimal, homoeopathic[obs3]; atomic, subatomic, corpuscular, molecular; rudimentary, rudimental; embryonic, vestigial. weazen|!, scant, scraggy, scrubby; thin &c. (narrow) 203; granular ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of importance to it, and with only one business is it occupied: it is elucidating to itself those moral laws by which it lives. The moral laws are already in existence; humanity is only elucidating them, and this elucidation seems unimportant and imperceptible for any one who has no need of moral laws, who does not wish to live by them. But this elucidation of the moral law is not only weighty, but the only real business of all humanity. This elucidation is imperceptible just as the difference between the dull and the sharp knife is imperceptible. ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... eyes from the atrocious metamorphosis, exclaim it is chance—it is fate; arbitrary sounds and sterile syllables, with which no distinct idea can ever be associated. Alas! are there not imperceptible threads by which a regulating hand guides us through a crooked labyrinth from causes to effects, and prepares in silence the events of the universe? Prostrated by implacable vengeance, and despoiled of the exclusive right to discoveries and honors, Columbus pines in inaction; but ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... for a moment, and showed by an imperceptible movement that he had made his presence felt. Not to embarrass her Somerset hastened to withdraw, at the same time that she passed round to the other part of the terrace, followed by the cat, in whom Somerset could imagine a certain denominational ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... supported by what I may call "the common element"—by the like-minded men of unlike parties—will be retained in power, though parties are even, and though, as Treasury counting reckons, the majority is imperceptible. If happily, by its intelligence and attractiveness, a Cabinet can gain a hold upon the great middle part of Parliament, it will continue to exist notwithstanding the hatching of small plots and the machinations ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... they may learn from their very Bibles and prayer-books. There are such things as education and culture—not to speak of good birth. You yourself, Dr. Millar, are fairly well born and well connected for a professional man." She instanced this with an imperceptible bridle and toss of her matronly head, which hinted broadly, "If it had not been so, Jonathan, I should never have been Mrs. Millar." The movement threatened to deposit her cap on the carpet behind her, but she recovered it in time, and took up the ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... and gave the juvenile patron the benefit of the entire length and breadth of his art, omitting nothing that could add dignity or perfection to the operation. It was quite certain that, if there was anything like an imperceptible down on his face at the commencement of the process, there was nothing left ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... dark, and thickly wooded ravines so common in America. As it neared the Detroit, however, the abruptness of its banks was so considerably lessened, as to render the approach to it on the town side over an almost imperceptible slope. Within a few yards of its mouth, as we have already observed in our introductory chapter, a rude but strong wooden bridge, over which lay the high road, had been constructed by the French; and from the centre of this, all the circuit of intermediate clearing, even to ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... sad infection is syphilis, instead of gonorrhea, there are still other miseries in store for it. If it is not so fortunate to be stillborn, it may have infection that ranges from almost imperceptible degrees to the most loathsome extent that it is possible for animal tissue to harbor. Its brain may be so invaded by the syphilitic parasites that it can never attain any degree of mentality; its ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... was opening; slowly—slowly—by almost imperceptible degrees. I held the pistol pointed rigidly before me and my gaze remained fixed intently on the dimly seen opening. I suppose I acted as ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have done in ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... been well prepared beforehand out of doors or in a shed, and as it is brought into the greenhouse it should at once be built solidly into the beds. Then very little steam will arise from the beds; in fact, it will be imperceptible ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... to the world, with not sufficient remuneration or notice of the author to create even hope in the sanguine temperament of a poet. Mickle was more honoured at Lisbon than in his own country. So imperceptible are the gradations of public favour to the feelings of genius, and so vast an interval separates that author who does not immediately address the tastes or the fashions of his age, from the reward or the enjoyment ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... head, however, is of much value as a record unless its history is well known, and unless it has been in the hands of responsible persons. The measurements of antler spread can be considered authentic only when the skull is intact. If the skull is split an almost imperceptible paring of the skull bones at the joint would suffice to drop the antlers either laterally out of their proper plane, or else pitch the main beam backward. By either of these devices a couple of inches can be gained on each side, making a difference of several inches ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... left Dick Bewery, whom they approached so quietly that Bryce was by the lad's side before Dick knew he was there. And Harker, after one glance at the ring of faces, drew Bryce back and put his lips close to his ear and breathed a name in an almost imperceptible yet clear whisper. ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... metaphysics. For Identitat in the abstract no one can have an acuter vision, but in the concrete he is satisfied with a very loose approximation. He has the finest nose for Empirismus in philosophical doctrine, but the presence of more or less tobacco smoke in the air he breathes is imperceptible to him. To the typical German—Vetter Michel—it is indifferent whether his door-lock will catch, whether his teacup be more or less than an inch thick; whether or not his book have every other leaf unstitched; ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... however, for a final visit, and the day after to see them away, without any apparent breach in the confidence and friendship with which they regarded each other. There might be, perhaps, a faint almost imperceptible difference in Chatty, a little dignity like that which her mother had discovered in her, something that was not altogether the simple girl, younger than her years, whom Mrs. Warrender had brought to town. On ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... enactment of the Missouri Compromise there was prodigious material growth in every section of the American Union. In North Carolina the real prosperity of the people was imperceptible, by reason of the heavy emigration to the South and West. Not only population, but wealth, was continually withdrawing to more profitable fields of labor ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... your engagements with I and the effect of such a sanction will be more serious than you can easily imagine, since the knowledge that a connection is believed in the world, frequently, if not generally, leads by imperceptible degrees ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... the eye, yet must be imperceptibly convexed a little, for the line of watershed is hereabouts: walk from Hohenfriedberg to Striegau, the water on your left hand flows, though mainly in ditches or imperceptible oozings, to the north and west,—there to fall into an eastern fork of the Roaring Neisse [one of our three new Neisses, which is a very quiet stream here; runs close by the Mountain base, fed by many ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Two almost imperceptible jets of spiral smoke, and crack, crack, went two rifles, while simultaneously with the report, fell back into the boat, the perforated forage cap. Both balls had passed through it, and lodged in the heart of the tree to which the skiff was moored, and behind ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... years and keep building it up, when you pass imperceptibly from straw into soil, and when you reach that time, your breakdown of your straw is usually done without taking nitrogen from your soil itself, and from that time on you may release nitrogen. But until you get that imperceptible transformation from straw to soil, there is a time when the breakdown of the straw uses your nitrogen, which is all right, if it's late in the season, but not early. I'd want to watch my trees and get my nitrogen on early, then let the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... old man lay quietly in the torpor of mental and bodily exhaustion, with an imperceptible pulse and breath that grew fainter and fainter except when a long, deep and irregular inspiration seemed to prelude the flight ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... faculties thoughts are almost as audible as words. Hence, converse between individuals on our planet is not altogether a series of vocal ejaculations. On the contrary, among the older members of the race, communication between individuals is in some cases audibly imperceptible. ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... leading champions of "sound literary doctrines" have done him the honour to throw the gauntlet to him, even in his profound obscurity—to him, a simple, imperceptible spectator of this curious contest He will not have the presumption to pick it up. In the following pages will be found the observations with which he might oppose them—there will be found his sling and his stone; but others, if they choose, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... her, and she believed him as near perfection as a mortal could well be. The first few months of her married life passed swiftly away in the enjoyment of as high a degree of felicity as her mind seemed capable of appreciating. After that, a shadow fell upon her spirit—dim and almost imperceptible at first, but gradually becoming denser and more palpable. Harriet had noticed, from the first, that her husband but rarely spoke of his family, and always evaded any questions that a natural curiosity prompted her to make. If he received any letter from home, he carefully ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... animal, exact even to the dainty contours and furrows around that which represents the spire of the ultimate shell, is still without trace of visible organs. That, however, its substance is highly complex is obvious, for as imperceptible development progresses the exterior is transformed into a substance resembling rice tissue-paper—an infinitely fragile covering—which from day to day insensibly toughens in texture and becomes separate from the animal. Faint ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... dubiously at Mr. Montross, who nodded. Mr. Cray, also, made an almost imperceptible sign of concurrence. Magnelius Grandcourt, the sixty-year enfant terrible of the company, dreaded for his impulsive outbursts—though the effect of these outbursts was always very carefully considered before-hand—stepped jauntily across the floor, and lifting ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... anywhere; and Diana was very quiet looking at it. But Mrs. Bartlett's eye was upon her much more than upon her work; which, indeed, could go on quite well without such supervision. She broke silence at last, speaking with an imperceptible little sigh. ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... child! we can see many beauties in those we love that are imperceptible to other eyes," Elsie returned ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... on the almost imperceptible watershed which separates the Herat valley from the Caspian Sea. This city, only a few months ago, was entirely destroyed by a severe earthquake. Under date of January 28, 1894, the American press reported: "The ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... characteristics of their former earth lives, and reincarnate rapidly in order to pursue their material attractions. Of course, there is slowly working even in these undeveloped souls an upward tendency, but it is so slow as to be almost imperceptible. In time these undeveloped souls grow sick and tired of their materiality, and then comes the chance for a slight advance. Of course these undeveloped souls have no access to the higher planes of the Astral world, but are confined ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... causes of wars as poverty and barbarism, since the folly and wickedness of men are incurable, there remains but one good action to be done. The wise man will collect enough dynamite to blow up this planet. When its fragments fly through space an imperceptible amelioration will be accomplished in the universe and a satisfaction will be given to the universal conscience. Moreover, this ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... vicarious factor. He could slip from concentrated reproaches to the liveliest remorse for himself as The Automobilist in General, or for himself as England, or for himself as Man. From remorse for smashing his guest and his automobile he could pass by what was for him the most imperceptible of transitions to remorse for every accident that has ever happened through the error of an automobilist since automobiles began. All that long succession of blunderers became Mr. Britling. Or rather Mr. Britling became all that ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... the main river and sailed for many miles by narrow channels, where the current, for the most part, was almost imperceptible. They were more than a month from the time they started before they reached the spot at which they were to take in the cargo for their return voyage. The flat was then loaded up with grain, which was put ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... inferiors. For the pleasure so derived may be traced to three exciting causes. The first is the naturalness, in fact, of the things represented. The second is the apparent naturalness of the representation, as raised and qualified by an imperceptible infusion of the author's own knowledge and talent, which infusion does, indeed, constitute it an imitation as distinguished from a mere copy. The third cause may be found in the reader's conscious ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the lameness will vary with the rapidity of the gait, and with the character of the road upon which the animal is made to travel. For instance, many animals in which the lameness is imperceptible at a walk become 'dead' lame at a fast trot. It is sufficiently explained when one remembers the greater movements of expansion and contraction of the posterior parts of the wall brought about by the increase in the rate of progression. The same animal, too, will go distinctly more lame upon ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... sometimes the case in civilization, with the idea of disguising any possible natural odor, but with the object of heightening and fortifying the natural odor.[58] If the primitive man was inclined to disparage a woman whose odor was slight or imperceptible,—turning away from her with contempt, as the Polynesian turned away from the ladies of Sydney: "They have no smell!"—women would inevitably seek to supplement any natural defects in this respect, and to accentuate ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... was but a visibly symbolic embodiment of my thought content that had been allowed to lapse as a result of my fatigue. The symbol is easily recognized as such. The extension into the dark sea corresponds to the pushing on into a dark problem. The blending of atmosphere and water, the imperceptible gradation from one to the other means that with the "mothers" (as Mephistopheles pictures it) all times and places are fused, that there we have no boundaries between a "here" and a "there," an "above" and a "below," and for this reason Mephistopheles ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... begin to understand? It was all a sham then, you say? No, it was all real as far as it went. You are young—you haven't learned, as you will later, the thousand imperceptible signs by which one gropes one's way through the labyrinth of human nature; but didn't it strike you, sometimes, that I never told you any foolish little anecdotes about him? His trick, for instance, of twirling ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... Mrs. Cliff, itself, had seemed to her to be casting off its newness and ripening into the matured home. Much of this was due to work which had been done upon the garden and surrounding grounds, but much more was due to the imperceptible influence of the Misses Thorpedyke. These ladies had not only taken with them to the house so many of the time-honored objects which they had saved from their old home, but they had brought to bear upon everything around them the courtly ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... black point, almost imperceptible, appeared upon the horizon. Rapidly it increased in size, until it assumed the form and dimensions of a boat with rowers in it, followed by ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... have been a lifting of the eyebrow and an imperceptible nod of his master's head in the ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... swiftly and tranquilly away. Ernest still dwelt in his native valley, and was now a man of middle age. By imperceptible degrees, he had become known among the people. Now, as heretofore, he labored for his bread, and was the same simple-hearted man that he had always been. But he had thought and felt so much, he had given so many of the best hours of his life to unworldly hopes for some great good to mankind, that ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was," the mountain-man went on; and an imperceptible pause followed the words. "We rid down to Garyville to be wed, an' we went from the jestice's office to the office of this here Dickert. He had a cuss with him that was no better'n him; an' when it come to the time in the signin' ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... an almost imperceptible cloud shadowing their gayety. Little did Archie think, when he declared so confidently that "they wouldn't get any of it," that before the summer was over, they would experience to some infinitesimal extent the cruel, relentless, crushing ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... for the last time. I thought to myself—on so seeing him—(added the sculptor) that it is thus that I will chisel your bust in marble." Dannecker then requested me to draw my hand gently over the forehead—and to observe by what careful, and almost imperceptible gradations, this boldness of front had been accomplished; I listened to every word that he said about the extraordinary character then, as it were, before me, with an earnestness and pleasure which I can hardly describe; and walked round and round ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Wit and the Judgment: For, in truth, the Judgment is nothing else but the Brightness of Wit, which penetrates into the very bottom of Things, observes all that ought to be observ'd there, and descries what seem'd to be imperceptible. From whence we must conclude, That 'tis the Extention and Energy of this Light of Wit, that produces all those Effects, usually ascrib'd ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... I suppose, that Man will continue to enjoy the highest glory, of which his human nature is capable.—That all who in past ages have endeavoured to ameliorate the state of man will rise and enjoy the fruits and flowers, the imperceptible seeds of which they had sown in their former Life: and that the wicked will during the same period, be suffering the remedies adapted to their several bad habits. I suppose that this period will be followed by the passing away of this Earth and by our entering the state of pure intellect; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... for a time to have been affected by them. The two works named are, however, of the highest importance; in them, if we are not mistaken, are to be found the first signs of the disappearance, as it were, of the sonata of three movements, and, perhaps, of the sonata itself, into the "imperceptible." After Op. 90 Beethoven wrote sonatas in four movements, but that does not affect the argument, neither does the fact, that after Beethoven are to be found several remarkable sonatas with the same number. ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... about to spring, and utters not a word. The noise of his footsteps, his very breathing, he tries to conceal from the blind man. At last, with a spring, he drives his sword full blast at Michael's breast. An imperceptible movement of the blind man's knife turns aside the blow. Michael is not touched, and coolly waits a second attack. Cold drops stand on Ogareff's brow; he draws back a step and again leaps forward. But like the first, this attempt fails. ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... brightly in a very dark sky. Not a breath of air was felt. Even the smoke of the forge fire rose perpendicularly a short way, until an imperceptible zephyr wafted it gently to the west. Yet there was a heavy swell rolling in from the eastward, which caused enormous waves to thunder on Ralph the Rover's Ledge, as if they would ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... My imperceptible pause of surprise drew from Emily that sudden in-taking of breath I have before remarked, and I could not but feel that she intended, as I felt, a subtle sarcasm in the sound. Accordingly I made no comment, secured Mrs. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the body of the river poured across a little narrow fell, ran some ten feet very smoothly over a bed of pebbles, then getting wind, as it were, of another shelf of rock which barred the channel, began, by imperceptible degrees, to separate towards either shore in dancing currents, and to leave the middle clear and stagnant. The set towards either side was nearly equal; about one half of the whole water plunged on the side of the castle, through a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on the box and waited, meditating upon the probable occupations of gentlemen who habitually slept till ten o'clock in the morning and sometimes till twelve. From time to time he brushed an almost imperceptible particle of dust from his very smart blue cloth knees, and settled the in-turned collar of the perfectly new blue guernsey about his neck. It was new, and it scratched him disagreeably, but it was highly ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... watch to seek some repose and shelter. With that purpose he couched himself down behind one of the most bulky of the Highlanders, who acted as lieutenant to the party. Not satisfied with having secured the shelter of the man's large person, he coveted a share of his plaid, and by imperceptible degrees drew a corner of it round him. He was now comparatively in paradise, and slept sound till daybreak, when he awoke, and was terribly afraid on observing that his nocturnal operations had altogether uncovered the dhuiniewassell's neck and shoulders, which, lacking the plaid which ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... corruption. There are a sort of middle tints and shades between the two extremes; there is something uncertain on the confines of the two empires which they first pass through, and which renders the change easy and imperceptible. There are even a sort of splendid impositions so well contrived, that, at the very time the path of rectitude is quitted forever, men seem to be advancing into some higher and nobler road of public ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... tried to make these quarrels up, but she never thought that I should be successful, and would tell me that it was hopeless to try and make everybody agree. These attempts at mediation, which gave us an imperceptible superiority over the other children, formed a very pleasing tie between us. Even now I cannot hear "Nous n'irons plus an bois," or "Il pleut, il pleut, bergere" without my heart beating rather ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... of mountains bounding the Kachi to the westward is a continuous wall with imperceptible breaks only, and it bears the local names of Gindari, Takari, and Kirthar. Through this uniform rampart there are two notable rents or defiles, viz.: the Mulla opening opposite Gundana, leading to Kelat; and the Bolan entering ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... had declared, Sir Charles never rose from his bed again; but he sunk so gradually that it was almost imperceptible, and it was not until the summer of that year that he slept with his fathers, dying without pain, and in perfect possession of ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... almost imperceptible manner she felt that the girl had rebuffed her. The conversation had been pleasant enough, yet Kesiah had meant to show in it that she considered Molly's position changed since the evening before; and it was this very suggestion that the girl had tossed lightly aside—tossed ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... a river has added to your land by alluvion becomes yours by the law of nations. Alluvion is an imperceptible addition; and that which is added so gradually that you cannot perceive the exact increase from one moment of time to another is added ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... cured: for depravity is like chronic diseases, dropsy and consumption for instance, but Imperfect Self-Control is like acute disorders: the former being a continuous evil, the latter not so. And, in fact, Imperfect Self-Control and Confirmed Vice are different in kind: the latter being imperceptible to its victim, ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... your mind, fanned by curiosity's wing, may seem quite trivial; to dwell on and delight in it may be to you something indifferent. That sentiment which, scarcely formed, commences to germinate in your heart, and to produce therein emotions so imperceptible that you are but imperfectly conscious of its presence, seems insignificant at first sight; that unguarded glance seemed to you a matter of no import, and which, at an earlier or later period of your life, would have but little consequence. At ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... spotless festoons, as it had fallen by chance, or been cast carelessly from the hands of the boatmen. The beak, or prow, rose in its sharp gallant stem, resembling the stately neck of a swan, slightly swerving from its direction, or inclining in a nearly imperceptible sweep, as the hull yielded to the secret influence of ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... her mother had taken their meals together; on Sunday, specially invited to dine with Mrs. Barrington and Miss Arran. Mrs. Boyd shrank from these occasions but the girl seemed guiding her with an almost imperceptible grace. ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... quest of shawls to spread upon the mantle-stand, giving his colleagues a significant glance. "What a bore!" he said plainly, with an almost imperceptible shrug ...
— Gaudissart II • Honore de Balzac
... him," said Carter, in response to an almost imperceptible nod from the chief; "he's all right except for a scalp ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... said the musketeer, continuing his imperceptible tone of irony, "I had no idea such ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... were passed around by the incorrigible Charles Douglas, but to all Guy Trevelyan was invulnerable. He betrayed no sign of the inward tempest raging within, save by the almost imperceptible expression which had attracted the scrutinizing eye of the generous ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... time given the boy an imperceptible, pacifying nod, when his eyes had sought his across the table as though asking for help. Yes, it was really getting more and more difficult ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... in actions, and not in words. The good man and the bad are characters precisely opposite, not characters distinguished from each other by imperceptible shades. The Providence that rules us all, has not permitted us to be left without a clew in the most important of all questions. Eloquence may seek to confound it; but it shall be my care to avoid its ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... exists close to me an invisible being that lives on milk and on water, which can touch objects, take them and change their places; which is, consequently, endowed with a material nature, although it is imperceptible to our senses, and which lives as I do, under ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... had had his breakfast, he told him what he had discovered during the dark hours. The laird listened with the light of a smile, not the smile itself, upon his face, and made no answer; but Cosmo could see by the all but imperceptible motion of his lips that ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... been completely taken in by appearances under certain conditions of light, and the novelty has worn off. Sastrugi are the hard waves formed by wind on a snow surface; these are seldom more than a foot or so in height, and often so obscured as to be imperceptible irregularities. On this occasion they often appeared like immense ridges until you walked over them. After going about 10 miles we spotted a tiny black triangle in the dead white void ahead, it was over a mile away and was the lunch camp of the dogs. We were fairly close before they broke camp and ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... strength, from the finest Merino wool to the rigid bristles of the wild boar. At just what point it can be said that the animal fiber ceases to be wool and becomes hair, is difficult to determine, because there is a gradual and imperceptible gradation from wool to hair.[1] The distinction between wool and hair lies chiefly in the great fineness, softness, and wavy delicacy of the woolen fiber, combined with its highly serrated surface—upon which the luster ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... "the waist, since one has to make use of that hideous word, should be a gradual, imperceptible, gentle transition from one to another of woman's two glories, her bosom and her womb, and you stupidly strangle it, you stave in the thorax, which involves the breasts in its ruin, you flatten your lower ribs, ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... matter plain even to the non-mathematical mind, when he said that "ten decimal places are sufficient to give the circumference of the earth to the fraction of an inch, and thirty decimal places would give the circumference of the whole visible universe to a quantity imperceptible with the most ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... Molly, that you could have been here clairvoyantly. It was one of those scenes, just touched with that fine and almost imperceptible perfume of the ludicrous, in which you especially delight. There are a thousand minute shreds of the absurd which my duller sense overlooks, but which never can hope ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... resembles that of navigable rivers, avoiding immovable obstacles with noble bends of concession, seeking the broad levels of opinion on which men soonest settle and longest dwell, following and marking the almost imperceptible slope of national tendency, yet forever recruited from sources nearer heaven, from summits where the gathered purity of ages lies encamped, and sometimes bursting open paths of progress and civilisation through what seem the eternal barriers of both. It is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... human beings. In old times he would have been exposed as soon as he came into the world; and to expose him would have been a kindness. From his birth a blight was on his body and on his mind. With difficulty his almost imperceptible spark of life had been screened and fanned into a dim and flickering flame. His childhood, except when he could be rocked and sung into sickly sleep, was one long piteous wail. Until he was ten years ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... brought his opera-glass to bear on the group. He was, however, discovered, and DIANA and her friends were so indignant at being seen without their false teeth and false "fronts," that the former deliberately set her dogs on him, who tore him into imperceptible fragments so small that no coroner could possibly find enough of him in order to hold an inquest. Of course ACTAEON'S conduct cannot be defended, but then his punishment was altogether too severe. There is every reason to suppose that DIANA ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... the moment when first I had set eyes on him—and since hatred, like affection, is often a matter of reciprocity, the Chevalier was not slow to return my dislike. Our manner gradually, by almost imperceptible stages, grew more distant, until by the end of a week it had become so hostile that Lavedan found ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... is inferior to those of India. The Palm-cat[1] lurks by day among the fronds of the coco-nut palms, and by night makes destructive forays on the fowls of the villagers; and, in order to suck the blood of its victim, inflicts a wound so small as to be almost imperceptible. The glossy genette[2], the "Civet" of Europeans, is common in the northern province, where the Tamils confine it in cages for the sake of its musk, which they collect from the wooden bars on which it rubs itself. Edrisi, the Moorish geographer, writing in the twelfth century, enumerates ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... to meet the individual needs. With a broad smile and an almost imperceptible shake of his old gray head Mr. Wright told how he had worked in the field without shoes when it was so cold until the skin cracked and the blood flowed from these wounds. He also told how he used to save his shoes by placing ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... When, after imperceptible manoeuvres by Mrs. Larkins, he found himself starting circuitously through the inevitable recreation ground with Miriam to meet Annie, he found himself quite unable to avoid the topic of the shop that had now taken such a grip upon him. A sense of danger only increased the attraction. Minnie's ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... Francine saw with pleasure that he was asserting his claim to Emily's preference, in the way of all others which would be most likely to discourage his rival. These various impressions—produced while Alban's enemy was ominously silent—began to suffer an imperceptible change, from the moment when Mirabel decided that his time had come to take the lead. A remark made by Alban offered him the chance for which he had been on the watch. He agreed with the remark; he enlarged on the remark; he was brilliant and familiar, ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... hearing. Others want to discuss property. In spite of some literary activity on their part, no discussion of property, bequest, and inheritance has ever been opened. Property and marriage are in the mores. Nothing can ever change them but the unconscious and imperceptible movement of the mores. Religion was originally a matter of the mores. It became a societal institution and a function of the state. It has now to a great extent been put back into the mores. Since laws with penalties to enforce religious ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... help me!" was Dexie's thought. Her heart beat wildly. She dared not take her eyes from his face. But there was something in her glance that had power to subdue him, and, feeling this, she met his gaze unflinchingly. The oar still lay across her lap. Gently, with an almost imperceptible motion, its blade reached the water, and slowly, very slowly, the distance between the boat and vessel was shortened. She sat back in her seat so still that the slight movement of her wrists was ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... have been brought. Jenkins isn't good for much, in point of spirit, as all the world knows; but he's my husband, and I have strove to do my duty by him. Now, if you want to go up, you can go," added she, after an imperceptible pause. "There's a light on the stairs, and you know his room. I'll take the opportunity to give an eye to the kitchen; I don't care to leave him by himself now. Finely it's ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... slow. In watching public opinion, in feeling the pulse of a cabinet, in softening the heart of a colleague, even when skies were gloomiest, he was almost provokingly anxious to detect signs of encouragement that to others were imperceptible. He was of the mind of the Roman emperor, 'Hope not for the republic of Plato; but be content with ever so small an advance, and look on even that as a gain worth having.'[127] A commonplace, but not one of the commonplaces that ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... mountains or the mediaeval speculation on their meaning. His letters to his wife from the Alps and Pyrenees record his impressions with a painstaking and detailed accuracy which does not forget the black-and-yellow spider performing somersaults on an imperceptible thread hung from one brier to another. The emotion after an hour on the Rigi-Kulm "is immense." "The tourist comes here to get a point of view; the thinker finds here an immense book in which each rock is a letter, each lake is a phrase, each village is an accent; from it arise, ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... them live in the constant expectation of Messiahs and providential beings destined to accomplish, as by a sort of miracle, the infinite and irresistible work of civilization. They will rely exclusively upon the concentrated efforts of the whole race, and cherish the encouraging thought that, however imperceptible and insignificant their individual contributions may seem to be, these form a part of the whole, and finally redound to the happiness ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... was drawn in with the surrounding tentacles between the plates. With a lens I saw the small mouth slowly open, and move over to that side, the lips gaping unsymmetrically; while with a movement as imperceptible as that of the hour hand of a watch, the tiny prey was carried along between the plates to the corner of the mouth. The mouth, however, moved most, and at length reached the edges of the plates, gradually ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... time. It was not an agreeable venture. It was like descending into a well with possible death at the bottom. I could see nothing and presently could hear nothing but the almost imperceptible sliding of my own fingers down the curve of the wall, which was all I had to guide me. Had he stopped midway, and would my first intimation of his presence be the touch of cold steel or the flinging around me of two murderous arms? I had met with no break in the smooth surface ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... was interrupted by a doctor looking in to prescribe for Miss Carden's cold. The said cold was imperceptible to vulgar eyes, but Grace had detected it, and had written to her friend, Dr. Amboyne, to come and make it as imperceptible to ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Anglo-Saxon-Celtic-Danish England, and the whole meaning of English history is missed in antedating that achievement by several hundred years. Edgar could do no more than evade difficulties and temporize with problems which imperceptible growth alone could solve; and the idealistic pictures of early England are not drawn from life, but inspired by a belief in good old days and an unconscious appreciation of the polemical value of such a theory in political controversy. Tacitus, a splenetic Roman aristocrat, had satirized ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... to put it into a footnote as a kind of cowardly corroboration. Nor are our other novelists much better. Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty, and wastes upon mean motives and imperceptible "points of view" his neat literary style, his felicitous phrases, his swift and caustic satire. Mr. Hall Caine, it is true, aims at the grandiose, but then he writes at the top of his voice. He is so loud that one cannot bear what he says. ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... respect to their ears, this important difference is to be observed between the sperm whale and the .. right. While the ear of the former has an external opening, that of the latter is entirely and evenly covered over with a membrane, so as to be quite imperceptible from without. Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... last always. Though still alive, he was, to all intents and purposes, imperceptible. He could now only be heard; he was reduced to a mere essence—the very echo of human existence, vox el praiterea nihil. It is true the schoolmaster asserted that he occasionally caught passing glimpses ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... upwards—as far as the little hole would permit—and there, not a foot from him, was a tawny yellow throat! with a tremendous paw moving slowly forward—so slowly that it might have suggested the imperceptible movement of the hour-hand of a watch, or of a glacier. There was indeed motion, ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... followed the proper road, it was a purely mechanical impulse that guided him. His mind was wandering at random through the field of probabilities, and following in the darkness the mysterious thread, the almost imperceptible end of which he had ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... crossed the last crevasse for a long time to come, and it was only a few inches wide. The surface looked grand ahead of us; it went in very long, almost imperceptible undulations. We could only notice them by the way in which the beacons we put up ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... she was buried in the depths of an almost imperceptible cross-aisle and at the end remote from the center. As her back was toward him and she had not heard his approach, he watched her for a minute in silence. His quick eye noticed that she wore a blue-green cotton stuff, with leaf-green belt and collar, that made her the living element of her ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... laughter, in the midst of which, though with many protestations and remonstrances, "don't you know," that young nobleman was driven to the fulfilment of his promise. In the midst of this commotion, a sign as swift as lightning, but, unlike lightning, imperceptible, a lifting of the eyebrows, a movement of a finger, was given and noted. In such a musical assembly the performance of a young marquis, with nobody knows how many thousands a year and entirely his own master, is rarely without interest. Mr. Derwentwater ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... stretched himself, and looked around him dully. For a long time he eyed the grave. The half-darkness changed by imperceptible degrees to full day; the sun was about to appear. The sky was nearly cloudless. The whole wonderful extent of the mighty ridge behind him began to emerge from the morning mist... there was a part of Sarclash, and the ice-green crest of gigantic Adage itself, which ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... whispered the young doctor in charge, as we paused at the door. "I want you to notice his face and his cough. His pulse seems very weak, almost imperceptible at times. The stethoscope reveals subcrepitant sounds all over his lungs. It's like bronchitis or pneumonia—but it ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... the bushes are entirely covered with vines and creepers, whose large, thick leaves form a scaly coat of mail under which the half-strangled trees seem to fight in vain for air and freedom. In shallow places stiff bamboos sprout, their long yellow leaves trembling nervously in an imperceptible breeze; again we see trees hung with creepers as if wearing torn flags; and once in a while we catch sight of that most charming of tropical trees, the tree-fern, with its lovely star-shaped crown, like a beautiful, dainty work of ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... morosely before his kitchen fire. Rightly assuming that his luxuriant car would involve him in a certain amount of public attention in Klondyke Street, the blind man dismissed it some distance from the house, and walked the rest of the way, guided by the almost imperceptible touch of Parkinson's arm. ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... Harry referred was larger than any other, being three feet square, and placed about waist-high from the floor. Bert watched intently. It seemed to him that he could see a slight trembling movement and then an almost imperceptible jump as the hand of an electric clock advances with a jerk. The face of the stone, too, seemed to be out ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... against), a word taken from Roman law, in which it was one of the examples of accessio, that is, acquisition of property without any act being done by the acquirer. It signifies the gradual accretion of land or formation of an island by imperceptible degrees. If the accretion or formation be by a torrent or flood, the property in the severed portion or new island continues with the original owner until the trees, if any, swept away with it take root in the ground. Alluvion ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... is believed that this story contains no indecorous stimulants, nor is it filled with inexplicated incidents imperceptible to the understanding. When anxieties have been excited by involved and doubtful events, they are afterwards elucidated by their consequences. In this the writer believes that he has ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... mental operations were the reverse of complex, and his literary method is simple. He felt his subject, and he expressed his conception not so much by direct statement or description as by almost imperceptible touches and shadings here and there, by a diffused tone and color, with very little show of analysis. Perhaps it is a sufficient definition to say that his method was the sympathetic. In the end the reader is put in possession of the luminous ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... props, buttresses, flying-buttresses, that keep the monument up, one thing there is that makes it totter. There is no loud battering from without, but a certain softness in the very foundations, which attacks the crystal with an imperceptible thaw. What thing do I mean? The humble stream of warm tears shed by a whole world, until they have become a very sea of wailings. What do I call it? A breath of the future, a stirring of the natural life, which shall presently ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... that utterance became blasphemous. Not living was it? Who knew but the debris at its foot was merely the cast-off sweat and exuviae of a stone life's great work-day? Who knew but the vital changes which were going on within its gritty cellular tissue were only imperceptible to us because silent and vastly secular? What was he who stood up before Tis-sa-ack and said, "Thou art dead rock!" save a momentary sojourner in the bosom of a cyclic period whose clock his race had never yet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... the great battles in the present war, on the water at least, may be decided by these silently moving, dinky sized, almost imperceptible submarines which carry the ever-destroying torpedoes. And the loss of lives will be more ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell |
