"Imperceptibly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... crowds assembled—swarmed 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 some ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... the conversation 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, ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... warn you very earnestly against scruples. I am glad that you are reconciled to your settlement, and think it a great honour to have shaken Lord Hailes's opinion of entails. Do not, however, hope wholly to reason away your troubles; do not feed them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind[1251]. If you will come to me, you must come very quickly; and even then I know not but we may scour the country together, for I have a mind to see Oxford and Lichfield, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... forth his hot rays and drew more and more of the earth's moisture and dissipated it in space. Gradually the forests vanished and then the streams and lakes dwindled and disappeared. By this time the atmosphere had thinned almost imperceptibly—and only by the aid of his scientific instruments had man been able to detect its thinning. Less and less rain fell, and finally even the ice-caps about the poles trickled away. Cold and gaunt and shadowy those regions lay silent and lifeless throughout the long nights, and loomed ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... unintentionally comic, but wonderful effects were produced by very slight movements. When a puppet was delivering a tirade, the listener, standing as motionless as one of the knights at Catania, would sometimes turn his head almost imperceptibly, or shift his weight from one leg to the other, or place his right hand on his hip with his arm a-kimbo. The action not only expressed contempt, acquiescence, or boredom as the case required, but vivified the whole scene, ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... of this gentleman, was not particularly enlightened by the comparison. She went lightly and quickly up the steep ascent, and along a furzy ridge which rose imperceptibly skywards, until she came to the fir plantation which sheltered the gamekeeper's cottage. The lattice stood wide open, and a man was leaning with folded arms on the sill as she came in sight, but in a flash the man had gone, and ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... 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 in his own abilities, but who was nevertheless ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... sank redly. Lingering long upon the ledge before their cabin, it at last slipped away almost imperceptibly, leaving Rand still wrapped in revery. Darkness, the smoke of distant fires in the woods, and the faint evening incense of the pines, crept slowly up; but Ruth came not. The moon rose, a silver gleam on the farther ridge; and Rand, becoming uneasy at his brother's prolonged ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... visit, and that the veiled picture was her portrait. He therefore determined to see it; and with this end in view, he walked round the studio, admiring all the paintings on the walls, maneuvering in such a manner as to imperceptibly draw nearer to ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... with speed that is imperceptibly increased. Nevins climbs to the top of the car and crawls toward the front of the train. He works his way to the coach immediately behind the motor. Standing on the platform he removes his coat and trousers and reappears arrayed in the ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... toward the culprits. When he took his seat beside the boys the preacher continued his discourse. Brother Baker's unctuousness angered Bud Perkins. He felt the implication that his conduct was bad, and his sense of guilt spurred his temper. Satan put a pin in Bud's hand. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Satan moved the boy's arm on the back of the pew, around Jimmy Sears. Then an imp pushed Bud's hand as he jabbed the pin into the back of a North Ender. The boy from the North End let out a yowl of pain. Bud was not quick enough. Brother Baker saw the pin; two hundred devout ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... the dim blue mountains of lake Como, framed in the high windows of the triclinium, he did not think much about what is beyond life. He said to himself: "Why desire the impossible? So very little is needed to satisfy a human soul." The enervating contact of luxury and comfort imperceptibly corrupted him. He became like those fashionable people whom he knew so well how to charm with his talk. Like the fashionable people of all times, these designated victims of the Barbarians built, with their small daily pleasures, a rampart against all offensive ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... horns of an unusually large size, even in its own group; while, at the same time, those horns have that peculiar structure which can only be traced in the Camelopardalis; they are covered with skin, which passes so imperceptibly to the horny state, that, as Captain Clapperton observes, "there is no exact demarcation where the one commences and the other ends." The five leading types of quadrupeds and birds being now represented, and in precisely the same order, we demonstrate ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... for symptoms of returning life. Corrie was right. The seaman's left eye quivered for a moment, causing the hearts of the three children to beat high with hope. Presently the other eye also quivered; then the broad chest rose almost imperceptibly, and a faint sigh came feebly and broken from the cold ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... and monotonous. And both she and Samuel worked consistently hard, rising early, 'pushing forward,' as the phrase ran, and going to bed early from sheer fatigue; week after week and month after month as season changed imperceptibly into season. In June and July it would happen to them occasionally to retire before the last silver of dusk was out of the sky. They would lie in bed and talk placidly of their daily affairs. There would be a ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... his hand, and closed his eyes once more, but the soft pounding did not cease, though now, in his sitting position, it only jogged him imperceptibly, as ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to a close. An ecstatic serenity reigned over the sea; the waters were so transparent that they repeated every image with absolute fidelity, and their ultimate line melted so imperceptibly into the sky that the two elements seemed as one, impalpable and supernatural. The wide amphitheatre of hills, clothed with olives, oranges and pines and all the noblest forms of Italian vegetation, embraced the silent sea, ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... told that a dream begins. To understand that, one must see the film through twice. But it is perfectly legitimate to deceive us. Through our ignorance we share the young man's hallucinations, entering into them as imperceptibly as he does. We think it is the next morning. Poe would start the story just here, and here the ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... correct one, the authority of the Old Testament prophecy would be gone; the authority of the Lord himself would be endangered, inasmuch as He always recognizes, in these prophets, organs of divine inspiration and power. A vain attempt is made at mitigating this usurpation, by imperceptibly substituting the collective body of the prophets for the single prophet. This view thus leads to, and interferes with another which we shall immediately examine. But if we would not give up the ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... honors, of the Byzantine court, so ambitiously solicited by their dukes, would have degraded the magistrates of a free people. But the bands of this dependence, which was never absolute or rigid, were imperceptibly relaxed by the ambition of Venice and the weakness of Constantinople. Obedience was softened into respect, privilege ripened into prerogative, and the freedom of domestic government was fortified by the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... ceased? Who can name the hour when buoyant, thoughtless, half-reckless youth felt the first sobering touch of manhood, or recall the day when he passed over the summit of his life, and faced the long decline of age? As imperceptibly do the seasons blend when one passes and merges into another. There were traces of summer in May, lingering evidences of spring far into June, and even in sultry July came days in which the wind in the groves and the chirp of insects at ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... irregular habits, and want of attention to diet, are common errors with most young men, and these gradually, but at first imperceptibly, undermine the health, and lay the foundation for various forms of disease in after life. It is a very difficult thing to make young persons comprehend this. They frequently sit up as late as twelve, one, or two o'clock, without experiencing any ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... had imperceptibly become so gay and light of heart, that he would have pledged the unconscious company in return, and thanked them in an inaudible speech, if the Ghost had given him time. But the whole scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... applies such a strong medicine to a fresh grief as would be quite unnecessary in one of any continuance; nor, if this very book had been sent to the captives some years after, would it have found any wounds to cure, but only scars; for grief, by a gentle progress and slow degrees, wears away imperceptibly. Not that the circumstances which gave rise to it are altered, or can be, but that custom teaches what reason should—that those things which before seemed to be of some consequence are of no such great ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... for all childhood. And in the meanwhile, yellow dusk was gradually deepening in the quiet air. Presently the tired sun sank like a weight, red-hot, burning his way down through filmy layers of Indian ink. The day had been rainy, but the clouds had all dissolved imperceptibly away into a broken chain of veils of mist, which looked with the sun behind them like dropping showers of liquid gold, or copper-coloured waterfalls: while underneath or through them the lines of low blue hills showed now ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... comprising southern Rhodesia, all the Transvaal, except a narrow fringe on the eastward, the Bechuanaland Protectorate, the Orange Free State, and the northern and central portions of Cape Colony. Westward this tableland slopes gradually and imperceptibly to sea level; to the south it reaches the Atlantic in the series of terraces and escarpments already described. Eastward it is shut in by the Drakensberg, whose spurs, projecting to the Indian Ocean, traverse at right angles Natal, Zululand, ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... were about his body. No two beings could be closer to each other, yet she guessed rather than understood the meaning of his last words that came out after a slight hesitation in a faint murmur, dying out imperceptibly into a profound and significant silence: "The sea, O Nina, is like ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... imperceptibly made a sign of the holy cross with his hand which he held at his breast, as though he was about to leap from a sinking ship into ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... lower carbon is stationary, the luminous point descending in measure as the carbons wear away through combustion. The upper carbon descends by its own weight, and imperceptibly, so as to keep the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... sponges or sea sand. Perfect harmony prevails meanwhile; there is none of the racket that there would be over the liquor in France; the talk is as sober as a money-lender's extempore speech; countenances flush, like the faces of the brides in frescoes by Cornelius or Schnorr (imperceptibly, that is to say), and reminiscences are poured out slowly while the smoke ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... 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, unalterable gold of fine days, on which the sharply ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... clenched and drawn back, as if it held a weapon to be hurled into her heart, was quivering too; his mouth seemed gasping in vain for words or voice; he resembled the malignant and tortured victim of a satanic possession; and this frightful dumb apparition was imperceptibly drawing ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... days and months went on. At Diana's first coming home from Clifton, no doubt her opinion of her own feelings, and Basil's opinion of them, was correct. If a change came, it came so imperceptibly that nobody knew it. ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... modern times we contemplate the heavens, a certain amount of scientific truth imperceptibly blends, even with the cursory glance of an unscientific person. He knows that the earth is revolving round the sun, and not the sun around the earth. He does not imagine the earth to be the centre of the universe, and he has some conception of chemistry and the ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... 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 his eighth basket and scrambled down to the man who weighed ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... Celt whose blood, mixed by a thousand channels, dictates from Paris the manners and revolutions of the world. He compared the Norman, in his ancient Scandinavian home, with that wonder of intelligence and chivalry into which he grew, fused imperceptibly with the Frank, the Goth, and the Anglo-Saxon. He compared the Saxon, stationary in the land of Horsa, with the colonist and civilizes of the globe as he becomes when he knows not through what channels—French, Flemish, Danish, Welsh, Scotch, and Irish—he draws his sanguine blood. And ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... earnestly lamented her unfortunate residence in his house, where the adoration of every inhabitant, from his father to the lowest servant, had impressed her with the strongest belief of his general worthiness, and greatly, though imperceptibly, encreased her regard for him, since she had now not a doubt remaining but that some cruel, some fatal ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... the child's wondering eyes were gazing. Again the divine Fiat had gone forth, "Let there be light." And, moving in stately march to the grand processional, slowly, majestically the light was coming. Softly, almost imperceptibly, the phantom world took shape, and grew clearer as the stars grew paler. Here a bush detached itself from its gray background, yonder a tree grew up tall and stately, there the curve of a hillock swelled up from a dark valley. And as each growing maple or cedar or alder-bush took shape, ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... wafted along almost imperceptibly, with but so slight an undulation as scarcely to be felt. To the eastward rose a high peak on Sumatra, around which the sky was rosy with the day god's first beams. The gentle waters around us were still ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... turned, and so sudden was his movement that Ringfield retreated as if caught guiltily; in doing so he very nearly slipped on the icy rocks that sloped imperceptibly towards the rushing fall, and he was about to warn the guide, who was farther down the bank than himself when the latter, rising ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... 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 true of ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... over the shifting sands, drawing imperceptibly nearer by soft, unhurried movements, the willows had come closer during the night. But had the wind moved them, or had they moved of themselves? I recalled the sound of infinite small patterings and the pressure upon the tent and upon my own heart that caused ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... Imperceptibly the outlines of the shape grew in the gloom from a deep, rich background, and I made out a figure of a youth all cased in armor save for the helmet, which was borne ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... dozen ants may be seen perpetually engaged in, apparently, an unmethodical but 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 Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... shoulders and let them sink heavily, and then he cast a look about the deserted lobby. Then he turned to her again and imperceptibly inclined his head. He ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... sagacity his way 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 effect ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... than all the colleges and schools of the nation. It is read not only by the men and women of mature years, but it begins its offices as teacher in the home circle as soon as the child becomes a pupil in the school, and it is constantly although imperceptibly moulding the minds of millions of our youths of all classes and all conditions, and it has no vacations in its great work. It not only aids the more intelligent to a sound exercise of judgment on questions of public interest, but it is ever quickening the impulses ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Piedmont bread, known in the country as "grisses." By dint of softening this bread in the mouth some of it is eventually swallowed the teeth come through of themselves, and the child is weaned almost imperceptibly. Peasants have usually very good digestions, and they are weaned with no ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... to some gently, imperceptibly, creeping in as the tide, through unsuspected creeks and inlets, creeps on a sleeping man, until he wakes to find himself surrounded. But to others it comes as a wave, breaking on them, beating them down, ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... conversation. From the nearest they went to the next, whereupon Paula as hostess took up one of the candlesticks and held it aloft to light up the painting. The candlestick being tall and heavy, De Stancy relieved her of it, and taking another candle in the other hand, he imperceptibly slid into the position of exhibitor rather than spectator. Thus he walked in advance holding the two candles on high, his shadow forming a gigantic figure on the neighbouring wall, while he recited the particulars of family history pertaining to each portrait, that he had learnt up with such eager ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... many soils and in many places. Always and everywhere it shows a clean, distinct trunk, its brown bark uniformly furrowed, but in such a manner as to give a nearly smooth appearance at a little distance. The branches do not leave the stem so imperceptibly as do those which give the elm its very distinct form, but rather start at a right angle, leaving the distinct central column of solid strength unimpaired. The winter tracery of these branches, and the whole effect of the liriodendron without foliage, is extremely ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... which 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 it unite with the land, and till the trees or ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... affairs of this kind we may most properly apply the well-known remark of nemo repente fuit turpissimus. It fares, indeed, with us on this occasion as with the unwary traveller in some parts of Arabia the desert, whom the treacherous sands imperceptibly betray till he is overwhelmed and lost. In both cases the only safety is by withdrawing our feet the very first moment ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... penetrating nature of the disease itself was such, and the infection was received so imperceptibly, that the most exact caution could not secure us while in the place; but I must be allowed to believe—and I have so many examples fresh in my memory to convince me of it, that I think none can resist their evidence,—I say, I must be allowed to ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... 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 with ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... sank deeper and deeper into the heart of the tree. The chips increased in scattered profusion. And then, as Betty Jo watched, the swinging ax cut through the last fibre of the tree's strength, and the leafy top swayed gently toward its fall. Almost imperceptibly, at first, it moved while Betty Jo watched breathlessly. Brian swung his ax with increasing vigor, now, while the wood, still remaining, cracked and snapped as the weight of the tree completed the work of the chopper. Faster and faster the towering mass of foliage ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... stared at Pinkey with a scowl that softened imperceptibly into a smile, and then a passionate flame leapt into ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... I was about to lose it—this glad emotion which had made the world what it was to me, an enchanted realm, a nature at once natural and supernatural; it would fade and lessen imperceptibly day by day, year by year, as I became more and more absorbed in the dull business of life, until it would be lost as effectually as if I had ceased to see and hear and palpitate, and my warm body had grown cold and ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... chorus urged, but Beverly (who was indeed a gentleman, every inch of him) shook his head imperceptibly at Charley; and while the little exclamations—"Do come! So much more comfortable! So nice to see more of you!"—dropped away, Miss La Heu had settled her problem quite simply for herself. A little procession of vehicles, townward ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... know," 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 ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... wincing imperceptibly. "Oh! that was the Paymaster's old notion. Once I almost fell in with it, and as odd a thing as you could imagine put an end to the scheme. Do you know what it was?" He glanced at her with a ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... exist forever; it must come to an end by consent or by force; and if by consent, it must from all experience, as from the nature of things, be preceded by ameliorating laws, which will have the effect of gradually and imperceptibly loosening the bonds ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... cross-road was 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 ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... hinges like the membrane of some huge lobster, invisibly manipulated by thirty thousand men or women, of whom each individual occupies a space of six square feet, but has a kitchen, a workshop, a bed, children, a garden, little light to see by, but must see all. Imperceptibly, the articulations begin to crack; motion communicates itself; the street speaks. By mid-day, all is alive; the chimneys smoke, the monster eats; then he roars, and his thousand paws begin to ramp. Splendid spectacle! But, O Paris! he who has not ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... as a natural history philosopher might examine a butterfly; and since it is so closely presented, suppose you try the sense of taste too, Sir! It is pleasant to the eye, you will find it also good for food, and to be desired to make one wise. Allow it to fall imperceptibly into your mouth; nay, you cannot judge of its merits from a half trial, like that; it must be taken entirely in. Don't exert yourself, in the least; another inspiration, and you are possessed. Ha! is it not good?—is it not sweet? He must be ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... about ten miles in the wood, they had the mortification to find themselves, on a sudden, within sight of the sea, and at no great distance from it; the path having turned imperceptibly to the southward, and carried them to the right of the mountain, which it was their object to reach. Their disappointment was greatly increased by the uncertainty they were now under of its true bearings, since they could not, at this time, get a view of it from the top of the highest trees. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... 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, but by a gift for making others feel ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... years more went by, or perhaps three, for time passes imperceptibly in Tahiti, and it is hard to keep count of it; but at last a message was brought to Dr. Coutras that Strickland was dying. Ata had waylaid the cart that took the mail into Papeete, and besought the man who drove it to go at once to the doctor. But the doctor ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... icy exterior could be broken through one would find warmth and life beneath," Prince Egon had declared more than once, half jestingly. Now this transformation had been partially effected, slowly, almost imperceptibly. But this soft, half-pained expression, which had taken the place of the haughty, cold one, this sorrowful glance, gave the young widow the one charm which had ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... slight as scarcely to be described; but it was the difference between evening and morning. The faintest transfusion of one prevailing tint into another had changed the whole expression of heaven and earth, and so imperceptibly and miraculously that a new day was already present to our consciousness. Our view of the wild cliffs of Svaerholt, less than two hours before, belonged to yesterday, though we had stood on deck, in full sunshine, during ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... good descent to attain to office irrespective of his political past, he gained for his great building all the working power extant in the state; and not only so, but the voluntary or compulsory participation of men of all parties in the same work led the nation also over imperceptibly to the newly prepared ground. The fact that this reconciliation of the parties was for the moment only externaland that they were for the present much less agreed in adherence to the new state of things than in hatred against Caesar, did not mislead him; he knew well that antagonisms ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... with pleasure the intimacy that existed between this man and his sister. Like Stella, though in a different sense, he had grown imperceptibly to look upon him as a safeguard. He was a sure antidote to nervous forebodings. The advent of the baby also gave him keen delight. Tommy was a lover of all things youthful. He declared he had never felt so much at ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... Lee's eyes narrowed imperceptibly. "I didn't plan to do any selling for six months yet," he said, not in expostulation but merely in explanation. "They're ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... air of asking if Bobby were indeed of adamant and Mrs. Blair hesitated imperceptibly over the sweeping negative. Equally slowly, "Oh, Bobby liked her, of course—she may have turned his head," she threw out, "but I don't believe he ever lost it for a moment. And after he met Ruth that summer ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... 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 ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... leaven goes on imperceptibly until the whole is leavened, so the kingdom of our Lord must increase. How extraordinary has been the progress of Divine truth since Bunyan's days! and who can predict what it ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... almost identical in terms, with the English Act of 1651. In the latter year, said the report of the Committee to the Convention, "one-half the navigation of England was carried on by foreigners. She has imperceptibly retaken her rights. Towards the year 1700 foreigners possessed no more than the fifth part of this navigation; in 1725 only a little more than the ninth; in 1750 a little more than a twelfth; and in 1791 they possessed only the fourteenth part of it."[35] It is ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... whittling ceased, his hands fell slack and he began to stare out through the snow-walled window. His anxiety for Hugh slipped imperceptibly into a vague pondering over his own youthfulness. That's what those two were always telling him, sometimes savagely, sometimes tenderly! "You're too young." What did it mean to him, anyhow, that he was "too young"? A ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... 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
... there was written, in shaky capitals, what was evidently intended as the copy for an advertisement. She watched Henry eagerly as he read it, and when at first she could detect no change in his expression, her eyes widened, and her lips trembled imperceptibly. Then Henry, half-way down the page, began to grin: and his grin spread and spread until his whole face was abeam with joy. He came to the last line, gasped, looked up at Anna, and suddenly springing towards her, he caught her in his arms, and waltzed ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... removes you from office? he cannot remove you from the lake; and if readers or customers will not bite, the pickerel will. We must keep busy, of course; yet we cannot transform the world except very slowly, and we can best preserve our patience in the society of Nature, who does her work almost as imperceptibly as we. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... watching Jack keenly, to note if her words produced any effect on that immobile face. She was not disappointed: he started, almost imperceptibly, and as he fixed his dark eyes upon her own, she noticed, as never before, how keen and piercing, and how eloquently beautiful they were. Miss Gladden's eyes did not drop before his searching gaze; she was determined that he should read only sincerity and candor ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... from behind the dovecote washing his teeth with ostentatious ritual. Full-fleshed, heavy-haunched, bull-necked, and deep-voiced, he did not look like 'a fearful man'. Kim signed almost imperceptibly that matters were in good train, and when the morning toilet was over, Hurree Babu, in flowery speech, came to do honour to the lama. They ate, of course, apart, and afterwards the old lady, more or less veiled behind a window, returned to the vital business of green-mango ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... private secretary when he died, Phil a medical student; I who aspired to the position of a minister of state have to content myself with that of a regimental judge. The years have passed by quickly and imperceptibly. Of course I have noticed that the lines under my eyes have grown deeper and that my hair has turned grey at the temples, but I should never have thought that we had travelled so far on the road to ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... 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 Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... eclogue-cycles, to the latter the lighter and more occasional verse, the pastoral ballads and the lyrics. The division is necessarily somewhat arbitrary, for the two traditions act and react on one another incessantly, and the types merge almost imperceptibly the one into the other; but that does not prevent the spirit that manifests itself in Drayton's eclogues being essentially different from that which produced Breton's songs. I shall not, however, try to draw any hard and fast line between the two, but shall rather deal first ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... should be to one of the deep, rich crimson-colored species, such as are found in quantities in the Bay of Fundy. I have seen such an animal, when first thrown into a tank of sea-water, remain for a while closely contracted, looking like a soft crimson ball. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, as it becomes accustomed to its new position, it begins to elongate; the fringes creep softly out, spreading gradually all their ramifications, till one end of the animal seems crowned with feathery, crimson sea-weeds of the most delicate tracery. It is much to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... cotton-wool. Beyond these nothing but the single telegraph wire which connects Yakutsk with civilisation. Coated with rime it used to stand out like a jewelled thread against the dazzling sky, which merged imperceptibly from darkest sapphire overhead to tenderest turquoise on the horizon. Who can describe the delights of a sleigh journey under such conditions, or realise, in imagination, the charm and novelty of a wild gallop over leagues of snow behind game little Siberian horses, tearing along to the clash ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... brickwork can thus nearly mask the heat of a furnace, cannot some scores of miles of rock nearly mask the heat in the depths of the earth, even though that heat were seven times hotter than the mightiest furnace that ever existed? The heat would escape slowly, and perhaps imperceptibly, but, unless all our knowledge of nature is a delusion, no rocks, however thick, can prevent, in the course of time, the leakage of the heat to the surface. When this heat arrives at the surface of the earth it must, in virtue of another thermal law, gradually radiate away and be lost ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... the scarcely less attractive pages of his biographies, like the flowing of the gentle stream on which he sometimes cast his line, to practise "the all of treachery he ever learnt," he leads the delighted reader imperceptibly on, charmed with the natural beauty of his sentiments, and the unaffected ease and simplicity ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... expression. The writer of "Dream Children" will have a select audience, but he will have it pretty much to himself, and, as the best of all rewards which he could have, he will educate the thoughts of his juvenile readers imperceptibly into a greater love and reverence for the very ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... of the ten or twelve people one meets in a month not only say but feel and assume a thing, it is very hard not to fall into the belief that the thing is so. Imperceptibly almost Ann Veronica began to acquire the new attitude, even while her mind still resisted the felted ideas that went with it. And Miss Miniver ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... Max, giving him one of those soldier looks which long experience has taught to penetrate flesh and bone and brain down to a man's hidden self. "It is true that I have no right to excuse myself for my own private affairs." He hesitated, almost imperceptibly, then turned to Max. "Add to your past kindness by taking my daughter to the hotel, Monsieur, where in my name she will engage a room for herself—since, unfortunately, I have no home to offer her. I will go with you both to a cab, and then return to duty. ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... life," writes Mr. Tazewell, "was spent in the freest intercourse with your dear father, and during this intercourse mere time effected changes in our relations so gradually and imperceptibly, that, until they were matured into their last state, I was often at a loss to determine what was their true character. We first met in the year 1780, at the house of your grandfather, in Greensville county, (who was also the paternal grandfather of Mr. Tazewell), ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... 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 and ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... the paving-stones of the street, grass was springing. Nowhere was the least sign of life: the place seemed utterly deserted. I stood alone in the midst of profound silence and desolation. Silence? No! As I listened, there came to my ears from all sides, dully at first and almost imperceptibly, a low creeping sound like subdued moaning; a sound that never ceased, and that was so native to the place, I had at first been unaware of it. But now I clearly gathered in the sound and recognised it as expressive of the intensest ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... imperceptibly; in other words, as much as a military man may. There were a few questions that he wanted to ask this cadet. But it was Bates's superior officer who was now doing ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... grief is tasting, Fate seems to scorn his faithful love, And imperceptibly is wasting, Wasting away, the ...
— The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems • Alexander Pushkin and other authors
... decay that had imperceptibly begun in his wife's bodily and mental strength during her illness of the previous winter, had been making quicker progress. She lost her reticence of speech, and often talked to herself. She had not so much forethought as of old; slight differences, it is true, but which, with some others ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Syphilis.—Primary ulcer of a circular form, excavated, without granulations, with matter adhering to the surface, and with a thickened edge and base. The hardening is very circumscribed, not diffusing itself gradually or imperceptibly into the surrounding parts, but terminating rather abruptly. Its progress is slow, ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... prospect of rolling pasturage, hilly pasturage, and wooded mountains; the grass-lands and grassy hillsides diversified by scattered trees, clumps of trees and small groves; the lower levels of woodland broken by grassy glades; the brighter green of the forests of chestnut, beech, and oak merging imperceptibly into the darker green of the pine-forests; the score of farms in sight brilliant in the green landscapes like semi-jewels; all the wide prospect glowing under a deep blue sky, varied by a very few very white ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... canoe was altogether changed as soon as it was released from the strain of the boat behind. There was no more tugging and jarring, but she rose and fell on the waves almost imperceptibly. ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... has set in, coming upon the land, not gradually and imperceptibly as in many other climates, where a mild and genial spring-time intervenes between the seasons of extreme cold and heat, but suddenly, and, as it were, almost at a bound. But two or three short weeks ago the face of ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... walking on, drawn almost imperceptibly by the magic thread of the melody, which had led us, by devious paths, to a low stone wall, beyond which we could see the gleam of lighted windows and the twinkle of fairy-lamps among the trees. And over there, ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... made elaborate preparations; he collected subscriptions, engaged contributors, and composed a long and learned prolegomena to the work. It was all useless; Cardinal Wiseman began to think of other things; and the scheme faded imperceptibly into thin air. Then a new task was suggested to him: "The Rambler", a Catholic periodical, had fallen on evil days; would Dr Newman come to the rescue, and accept the editorship? This time he hesitated rather longer than usual; ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... from the deck. The oars dipped, and the galley started imperceptibly. No sound from without, none from within, yet each man in the cabin instinctively poised himself for a shock; the very ship seemed to catch the sense, and hold its breath, and ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... 'This easy and universal belief,' observes the philosophical historian of the Decline and Fall, '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 revolutions. But if the interval between ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... features grew plain to 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 from Casanova, who held his breath as he lay ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... the shadow of the trees, at a point where three hideous things were hanging suspended by rawhide ropes. They were swaying gently, stirred almost imperceptibly under the pressure ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... are borders of blooming chrysanthemums and China asters, and trees with quaint foliage, and flowering creepers about the house. The flower borders seem to tail away into dry grass and bushes and trees of the park, and that changes imperceptibly into dry rolling country ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... aside their state, and enjoy the unpretending pleasures of domestic and rural life, cultivating their garden, and, as far as the imperious calls of public affairs would allow them time, watching over the education of their children, to whom the example of their own tastes and habits was imperceptibly affording the best of all lessons, a preference for simple ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... know anything which relieves the mind so much from the sullens as trifling discussion about antiquarian old-womanries. It is like knitting a stocking, diverting the mind without occupying it; or it is like, by Our Lady, a mill-dam, which leads one's thoughts gently and imperceptibly out of the channel in which they are chafing and boiling. To be sure, it is only conducting them to turn a child's mill; what signifies that?—the diversion is a relief, though the object is of little importance. I cannot tell what we talked of; but I remember we concluded with a lamentation ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... and its surroundings had in his time the outward look of a Virginia plantation. The President was required to pay the expenses of the house and grounds. In consequence, the grounds were uncared for, the palings broken or wanting, the paths undefined, and the place a waste, running imperceptibly into the barren fields about it. Within, the house was as simple as without, after the usual style of Virginia houses, where the scale was often extravagant but the details plain. Only in his table did Jefferson spend an unusual ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... age, as does that of their French peasant sisters. The Basques about Biarritz and St. Jean appear to associate with the French element in entire amity; the race strives still to keep distinct, but habits and idioms and manners imperceptibly mingle; they speak French or patois quite as much as their own tongue, and in divers ways hint at the working of ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... living to make up: her days had been as bare as the whitewashed school-room where she forced innutritious facts upon reluctant children. His coming had broken in on the slumber of circumstance, widening the present till it became the encloser of remotest chances. But imperceptibly the horizon narrowed. Life had a grudge against her: she was never to be allowed to ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... beats at the bottom of a cliff for ages, and imperceptibly wears its rugged projections to smoothness; but an earthquake overthrows it in an instant. The mind of Evellin, which for a period of seven years had contended with hope and fear, sometimes almost suspecting, and at other times rejecting ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... as if in sunlight, and the shadows were black and strongly defined. The light carried heat with it, but a singular heat. Maskull was unaware of any rise in temperature, but he felt his heart melting to womanish softness. His male arrogance and egotism faded imperceptibly away; his personality seemed to disappear. What was left behind was not freedom of spirit or lightheartedness, but a passionate and nearly savage mental state of pity and distress. He felt a tormenting desire to serve. All this came from the heat of the statue, and was ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... intelligent, loving mother must always experience when an almost idolized child, that she could press to her heart forever, is fading from her. She could see her dear, loving, bright little daughter—who was very precocious, talking more like a girl of ten than one of only five— slowly, almost imperceptibly, failing every day, and every day becoming more bright and beautiful; but it was the beauty of the flower that was to bloom but for a few hours, and then whither ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... distinction between the personal and impersonal, and also between the divine and human, was far less marked to the Greek than to ourselves. And as Plato readily passes from the notion of the good to that of God, he also passes almost imperceptibly to himself and his reader from the future life of the individual soul to the eternal being of the absolute soul. There has been a clearer statement and a clearer denial of the belief in modern times than is found in ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... system of shoal marks; the same patient, heedful use of leads and engines followed, the boat slipped through without touching bottom, and entered upon the third and last intricacy of the crossing; imperceptibly she moved through the gloom, crept by inches into her marks, drifted tediously till the shoalest water was cried, and then, under a tremendous head of steam, went swinging over the reef and away into deep water ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... perceiving them with more or less accuracy, and thereafter turning them over in the mind, reasoning and questioning concerning their import and meaning. The passive seer, on the contrary, works not at all and makes no effort, the visions coming slowly, almost imperceptibly, and in most cases having a literal interpretation. The visions in this case are not allegorical, emblematic, or symbolic, as in the case of the positive seer, but are actual visions of facts just as ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... All this time almost imperceptibly they were rising and climbing Shaddy's water steps, as he had called them. They fished and had success enough to keep their larder well stocked. Birds were shot such as were excellent eating, and twice over Shaddy ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn |
