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Invisibility   Listen
noun
Invisibility  n.  (pl. invisibilities)  The state or quality of being invisible; also, that which is invisible. "Atoms and invisibilities."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Invisibility" Quotes from Famous Books



... service," replied the spirit, "and will answer your questions. With regard to my visibility and invisibility"—he continued, with a smile, "for I will not wait for you to ask the explanation of what is in your minds—it is very simple. A man's soul can never die; a manifestation of the soul is the spirit; ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... famous; and her fingers, morally, tingled to box his ears. But what was to be done with mere 'London?' Wylder was hidden from mortal sight, like a heaven-protected hero in the 'Iliad,' and a cloud of invisibility ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... I should be led to suppose that his mind resembled Mr. Baruch's. But the British journalist's mental operations are a model of order and continuity compared to those of the former American War Industries Chairman. Like the heroes of the ancient poems Mr. Baruch's mind has the faculty of invisibility. You see it here; a moment later you see it there, and for the life of you cannot tell how it got from here to there, a gift of incalculability which must have been of great service in Wall Street, but which does not ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... Battisi), or Thirty-two Tales of a Throne, we find a bag always full of gold, a bottomless purse; earth which rubbed on the forehead overcomes all; a rod which during the first watch of the night furnishes jewelled ornaments; in the second a beautiful girl; in the third invisibility, and in the fourth a deadly foe or death; a flower-garland which renders the possessor invisible and an unfading lotus-flower which produces ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... is only the coffin of my heart, and my heart the unfortunate Echo that has grieved herself to death and invisibility. But perhaps your majesty does not believe in the power of grief, for doubtless you are unacquainted with ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... amounts to about 300 pounds a year. He was christened at the place; was in after years curate of it; and is now its incumbent. About two years ago, when he came to the church in the last-named capacity, the congregation was wretchedly thin—awfully scarce, and just on the borders of invisibility. It has since improved a little; but working up a forsaken place into real activity is a difficult task, which at times staggers the ablest of men. Mr. Brown is a scholar, and a thoroughly upright man. He believes not in fighting down other people's creeds; never rails against religious antagonists; ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... I had entered the shell zone; at Pont-a-Mousson, I crossed the borders of the zone of quiet; at Montauville began the last zone—the zone of invisibility and violence. Civilian life ended at the western end of the village street with the abruptness of a man brought face to face with a high wall. Beyond the village a road was seen climbing the grassy slope of Puvenelle, to disappear as it neared the summit of the ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... and this is a bitter pill too, is the almost insurmountable difficulty already recognised of determining how a man, without approaching his victim, could manage to inflict a mortal stab in her breast. No cloak of complete invisibility has yet been found, even by the ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green

... the sun that warms him or the star that seems just now his foothold in space. All shall be as his soul says when his soul determines what it shall say. Fire and wind and cold—when his soul speaks—and Invisibility itself and Nothing ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee

... of a dominating woman of the world with the mysterious and romantic quality of a myth. She was a legend in her lifetime, and she knew it. She tasted the joys of power, like those Eastern Emperors whose autocratic rule was based upon invisibility, with the mingled satisfactions of obscurity ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... the things upon the floor! His foot crushed one with a slippery squash! Nameless, hideous, noisome things grown monstrous, risen from their lurking invisibility in the drops of water! Sodden, gray-black and green-slimed monsters of the deep; palpitating masses of pulp! One lay rocking, already as large as a football with streamers of ooze hanging upon it, and a black-ink fluid squirting; others were rods of red jelly-pulp, already as ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... unknown race in Mongolia, say, people with the power of making themselves invisible, for Tyndall will believe him, and Huxley account for them, and the Illustrated London News publish their portraits—in the stage of invisibility. We do not say the book is admirable, or perfect, or anything else superlative; but we do say, and this with sure confidence, that no one who begins it will leave it till the narrative ends, or doubt for an instant, whether he knows Defoe or not, that he has been ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour

... each to his own loophole, to weary our eyes upon invisibility. Is some frightful and dismal storm about to break? But that night it did not. At the end of my long wait, with the first streaks of day, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... RESIDENCE.—The residence of the late Laureate is in the neighbourhood between freshwater Gate and Alum Bay, secluded by trees almost to invisibility. The front is covered with greenery, a fine magnolia growing round and over the front door. From under the lateral branches of a fine spreading cedar tree the Poet could look into Freshwater Bay and yet himself not be seen. The park-like grounds are pleasant to walk ...
— Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight • Various

... to shew himself, he conceived a son, who came out at his mouth, and was called Maiso. He had two others after him, one of them whose name was Visnu, was born out of his breast, the other called Brama, out of his belly. Before he returned to his invisibility, he assigned habitations and employments to his three children. He placed the eldest in the first heaven, and gave him an absolute command over the elements and mixed bodies. He lodged Visnu beneath his elder brother, and established him ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... had continued, with a few momentary intermissions, till near daylight. The fugitives must, therefore, have passed through the village long after its inhabitants were abroad; and how, without the gift of invisibility, they had contrived to elude notice, Edward could ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... latter they acquired—possibly in exchange for some of their own vitality, for spirits of this order are said to have envied man his material body—tuition in sorcery, and such properties as second sight, invisibility, and lycanthropy. ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... to the Trayastrims'as heaven [1], and there preaching for three months his Law for the benefit of his mother [2]. Buddha had gone up to this heaven by his supernatural power, without letting his disciples know; but seven days before the completion of the three months he laid aside his invisibility, and Anuruddha [3], with his heavenly eyes, saw the World-honored one, and immediately said to the honored one, the great Mugalan, "Do you go and salute the World-honored one," Mugalan forthwith went, and with head ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... they were once more within reach of Lee. But by what means, Pope might well have asked, had a whole army corps, with its batteries and waggons, passed through the cordon which he had planned to throw around it, and passed through as if gifted with the secret of invisibility? ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... that these learned men were sceptical of the beliefs which tradition had forged in their minds, but that the dragon had the power of hiding itself in a cloak of invisibility, just as clouds (in which the Chinese saw dragons) could be dissipated in the sky. The belief in these powers of the dragon was as sincere as that of learned men of other countries in the beneficent attributes which tradition had taught them to assign to their particular deities. In the ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... the Fields knew all this, but she had a brave heart, and determined that by some means or other she would overcome all obstacles, and rescue Cadichon from the power of Gangana. So, taking with her the water of invisibility, she sprinkled it over her, and mounting her favourite winged lizard, set out for the island. When it appeared in sight she wrapped herself in her fireproof mantle; then, bidding the lizard return home, she slipped past the dragons ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various

... his head up. He was close to the line of the rocket's ascent. He could see a trail of red sparks which stretched to invisibility. It was an extraordinarily thin line. The separate flecks of crimson light which comprised it were distant in space. They were so far from each other that the signal-rocket was a complete failure as a device making a streak of light that ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... him to obtain in marriage Brunhild, queen of Issland, who announced publicly that he only should be her husband who could beat her in hurling a spear, throwing a huge stone, and in leaping. Siegfried, who possessed a cloak of invisibility, aided G[:u]nther in these three contests, and Brunhild became his wife. In return for these services, G[:u]nther gave Siegfried his sister Kriemhild, in marriage. After a time, the bride and bridegroom went to visit G[:u]nther, when the two ladies disputed ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... celestial bodies, may be small; it is, indeed, as we shall afterwards see, almost infinitesimal. But in the economy of our earth the moon has played, and still plays, a part second only in importance to that of the sun himself. The moon is so close to us that her brilliant rays pale to invisibility countless orbs of a size and an intrinsic splendour incomparably greater than her own. The moon also occupies an exceptional position in the history of astronomy; for the law of gravitation, the greatest discovery that science has ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... world and all that is about us, Manchester and its hubbub, warehouses crammed with cloth, and mills full of jennies and throstles—these are the shadows; and the things that only the believing eye beholds, that are wrapped in the invisibility of their own greatness, these, and these only, are the realities. We see with the bodily eyes the shadows on the wall, as it were, but we have to turn round and see with the eyes of our minds the light that flings the shadows. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... and an attendant was gazing up and down the street. He looked at the car but he did not recognize the occupant, then several more residential roads were left behind, a highly respectable cemetery, a tin chapel, and the car, taking a hill as Fords know how, dropped Sandbourne-on-Sea to invisibility and surrounded itself with vast stretches of green and sun warmed country, June scented, and hazy with the warmth ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... have satisfied the Court and jury that she was either under the power of a delusion or practising an imposture. But, as they were predisposed to find something supernatural in the transaction, their minds seized upon the pretended invisibility of the mouse as conclusive ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... cattle. The seed of this and some other species of Fern is so minute (one frond producing more than a million) as not to be visible to the naked eye. Hence, on the doctrine of signatures, the plant—like the ring of Gyges, found in a brazen horse—has been thought to confer invisibility. Thus Shakespeare says, Henry IV., Act II., Scene 1, "We have the receipt of Fern ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... coat, and a green, bulging umbrella, pointing outwards, under his arm, to the infinite danger of all the passers-by. He was so commonplace a figure to Jeremy that, on ordinary days, he was shrouded by an invisibility of tradition. But, to-day, he was fresh and strange. "He'll be here to-morrow poking his nose into that box just the same, and ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole

... Brahm, a single day of which is like unto a thousand Yugas (four billion years of the earth), and his night as much—these worlds must come and go... The Days of Brahm are succeeded by the Nights of Brahm. In these Brahmic Days all things emerge from invisibility, and become visible. And, on the coming of the Brahmic Night, all visible things again melt into invisibility. The Universe having once existed, melteth away; and lo! ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... of a god, Hypatia? A god made up of our own intellectual notions, or rather of negations of them—of infinity and eternity, and invisibility, and impassibility—and why not of immortality, too, Hypatia? For I recollect we used to agree that it was a carnal degrading of the Supreme One to predicate of Him so merely human a thing ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... that seemed to spring up around him like magic; his prudent answers through his window to such as sought ghostly counsel; and above all, his invisibility, soon gained him a prodigious reputation, This was not diminished by the medical advice they now and then extorted from him sore against his will, by tears and entreaties; for if the patients got well they gave ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... restored to this vision of a day long dead, I was still of the same opinion. Oh! I should have put on my boots and my waterproof and gone down to the little wood to meet the enchanter! He would have given me the cap of invisibility, the purse of Fortunatus, and a pair of seven-league boots. He would have taught me to conquer worlds, and to leave the easy triumphs of dreamers to madmen, philosophers, and poets, He would have made me ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton

... loophole in the gate of the palisade I looked and saw the sandy neck joining the town to the mainland, and the deep and dark woods beyond, the fairy mantle giving invisibility to the foe. I drew back from my loophole and held out my hand to a woman for a loaded musket. A quick murmur like the drawing of a breath came from our line. The governor, standing near me, cast an anxious glance along the stretch of wooden stakes that were neither ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... came the adventures as in the following tale. When after a moment's space these ended, the infuriated Sultan gave orders to behead the Shaykh, who also plunged his head into the tub; but the Wizard divined the ill-intent by "Mukashafah" (thought-reading); and by "Al-Ghayb 'an al-Absar" (invisibility) levanted to Damascus. The reader will do well to compare the older account with the "First Vizir's Story" (p. 17) in Mr. Gibb's "History of the Forty Vizirs," etc. As this scholar remarks, the Mi'raj, with all its wealth of wild fable, is simply alluded to in a ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... north, Hervey would have that dim black mass, hovering on the verge of invisibility, to guide him. Traveling a little west of north he might have reached the road at a nearer point. But here the traveling was bad and the danger of getting lost greater. Tom had weighed one thing against another and told Hervey to go ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... was a skirmishing line of the waiting city flung out to this distant station—including some go-ahead flappers with autograph books to sign. It was, however, one of those occasions when the Prince was considered to be wrapped in a robe of invisibility until he had been to Government House and started from there to drive inland to the city and ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... dressing-gown, and believing myself unperceived, I noticed under the large oak in the roadside the figure of a young man who, by the imperfect light, appeared to be of Spanish extraction. But I evidently miscalculated my own invisibility; for he moved rapidly forward as I came to the window, and in a series of the most extraordinary pantomimic gestures saluted me. Beyond my experience of a few Greek plays in earlier days, I confess ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... see you, at the least they will take you for a madman; there will be trouble. But have no fear; bear a bold heart. None shall see you while I stalk at your side. I will cover you with the cloak of invisibility,—so that you may come in safety to the house of the great ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... metals; (3) thought transference, i.e. being able to transmit messages, irrespective of distance, from one brain to another without any physical medium; (4) hypnotism; (5) the power to hold converse with animals; (6) invisibility, i.e. dematerializing at will; (7) walking on, and breathing under, water; (8) inflicting all manner of diseases and torments; (9) curing all kinds of diseases; (10) converting people into beasts ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... explained. The man had undoubtedly possessed the bird's nest which communicates its charm of invisibility to its possessor, though not equally so to his shadow; and this nest he had now thrown away. I looked all round, and soon discovered the shadow of this invisible nest. I sprang towards it, and was fortunate enough to seize the precious booty, and immediately ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various

... Over the low ground to the west a flight of bombers appeared, bellowing. In mass formation they rushed out above the sea. Far to the right and high up, a second formation of man-made birds appeared suddenly. It dived steeply from invisibility toward the water. Over the horizon to the left there came V's of bomber-planes, one after another, by dozens and by hundreds. More planes roared above the shattered shack. They came in columns. They came ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... superstructure and her pilot-house, both of which were painted a delicate blue-grey colour that would be scarcely visible against the horizon astern. The chances, therefore, were strongly in favour of her invisibility. On the other hand, there was just a possibility that some keen eye aboard the liner, anxiously scanning the horizon in quest of help, might have sighted her; in which case a glimpse of the white ensign might be comforting. Mildmay therefore went to the flag-locker and drew ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... could observe, when the truce was broken for one it was broken for all, and all took alarm together. In some unexplained way, perhaps by the mere transmission of a general fear, word went around that the time had come for invisibility and craft. All at once, therefore, as it seemed to men, the wilderness ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... by Sir Joshua Reynolds. I was quite glad to see him; and we began chatting with all our old spirit, and he quite raved against my present life of confinement, an the invisibility it ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... Politics, especially where they might have affected the well-being of the child, were strictly kept in their proper place, And naturally she considered that, in the upbringing of a very small boy, that place should be remote almost to invisibility. ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker

... familiar face where he has supposed he would see a stranger. He forgot his shame in having a mother who ran an iron-mill; he even forgot that impudent thrust in the ribs; a spark of sympathy leaped between them as real in its invisibility as the white glitter of the molten iron sputtering over their heads. "Yes," he said, "it's all that, and it ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... destroy one of these worlds, and follow a fleet as it starts for their home nebula. Gradually, as they run, I will fade into invisibility, and they will not know that I have dropped back here to complete the work, but will think I am still following. Probably they will run to some other nebula in an effort to throw me off, but they will most certainly send back a ship to call ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell

... his voice showing more anger. "One weapon or whatever you want to call it. Practical invisibility. But that's enough. An invisible man with a knife is more deadly than a dozen ordinary men with modern armament. Are you sure you know nothing of ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett

... Down the coast a great searchlight swung its beam to and fro in the small wind and short sea. From the Vindictive's bridge, as she headed in toward the mole, there was scarcely a glimmer of light to be seen shoreward. Ahead as she drove through the water rolled the smoke screen, her cloak of invisibility, wrapped about her by small craft. This was the device of Wing-Commander Brock, without which, acknowledged the Admiral in command, the operation could not have been conducted. A northeast wind moved the ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... hold your eye fast in my hand and shall keep it safely for you until you please to tell me where to find these Nymphs. The Nymphs, I mean, who keep the enchanted wallet, the flying slippers and the what is it?—the helmet of invisibility." ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... been sponsor, Miss Essie. Well this is my garden of flowers. Then of fellow insects I have a somewhat confused variety. Mr. Stoutenburgh sings round his hearth in the shape of a black cricket. Mr. Linden passes unnoticed in the invisibility of a midge—nothing more dangerous. Mr. Somers does all the mischief he can in the way of devouring widows' houses. The two Messrs. De Staff" (two very spruce and moustachioed young gentlemen) "figure as wasp and snail—one would hardly think they belonged to the same ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... personage called Horey, or which Jobson calls the devil, acts a most conspicuous part, at the same time, that he generally carries on his operations in secret, impressing thereby on the minds of the natives, an idea of his invisibility. The Horey generally takes his station in the adjoining woods, whence he sends forth the most tremendous sounds, supposed to have a very malignant influence on all those who happen to be within hearing. It is, however, a fortunate circumstance for the native, who is so unfortunate ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... stealthily and industriously to further the schemes of Mucio, to the exclusion of more urgent business. Noiseless and secret himself, and delighting in clothing so much as to glide, as it were, throughout Europe, wrapped in the mantle of invisibility, he was perpetually provoked by the noise, the bombast, and the bustle, which his less prudent confederates permitted themselves. While Philip for a long time hesitated to confide the secret of the League to Parma, whom ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... mountain. It was not of this earth, but mysterious, ghostlike. It carried all the mystery and menace of a fog rolling toward you across the sea. The uniform aided this impression. In it each man moved under a cloak of invisibility. Only after the most numerous and severe tests at all distances, with all materials and combinations of colors that give forth no color, could this gray have been discovered. That it was selected to clothe and disguise ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis

... not," Braun said in irritation. "By Caesar, man, have you no imagination? Can't you see it was only a matter of time before someone, possibly working away on an entirely different subject of research, stumbled upon a practical method of achieving invisibility?" ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)

... glider position, horizontal and face downward, and the invisibility of all the machinery gave an extraordinary effect of independent levitation. Only by looking up, as it were, and turning my head back could I see the flat aeroplane bottom of the balloon and the rapid successive passages, swish, swish, swish of the vans of the propeller. I made a wide circle over ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... ever been seen to produce such an effect, well then, one could also infer on seeing old houses ruined in course of time that these ruins were produced by intelligent agents. For these are also effects of which we do not know of any intelligent agent, for both are effects, and the invisibility of the agent is present in both cases. If it is said that the world is such that we have a sense that it has been made by some one, then the question will be, whether you infer the agency of God from ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... three gifts—the first will give Unbounded riches while you live; The second health where'er you be; The third, invisibility." ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert

... restoring all his men as soon as they were wounded by a mere touch of his magic ring. Alberich, whom none but he could see, was allowed to lead the van and bear the banner, which seemed to flutter aloft in a fantastic way. The dwarf took advantage of this invisibility to scale the walls of the fortress unseen, and hurled down the ponderous machines used to throw stones, arrows, boiling pitch, and oil. Thus he greatly helped Ortnit, who, in the mean while, was performing unheard-of deeds of valor, which excited the admiration ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber

... although they could not help denying the supremacy of the pope, and looking upon him as a tyrant. Many slanders, they said, had been repeated respecting them, the most unjust of which was, that they indulged in carnal appetites, and, under the cloak of their invisibility, crept into the chambers of beautiful maidens. They asserted, on the contrary, that the first vow they took on entering the society was a vow of chastity, and that any one among them who transgressed in that particular would immediately lose all the advantages he enjoyed, and be exposed once more ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... "whether the figure followed me in a state of invisibility; but the moment I got into bed, I saw the great shade of Catharine rise before me: all of a sudden she bent her head towards me—but I don't know whether I ought to go on," said the narrator, interrupting himself; "for though I must believe it was only a dream, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... concealment was usually perfect, its location original and independent, its service accurate and intelligent. Dotted thinly over a wide front, the few guns were nevertheless often turned upon a common target, and were as difficult to detect from their invisibility, as to silence from the strength of the defences, in the case of the heavy ordnance, and in the case of the lighter pieces, from their instant change of position ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... hollowness in the vast place. The windows showed not any colour nor light; the splendid pillars soared up into the air and disappeared as if they mounted to heights of invisibility in the sky at night. Very far away, at the other end of the church it seemed, one lamp was burning, high over the transept. One could not see the chains of support nor the roof above it; it seemed a great star, but so ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington

... by Allah with infidels, to render it fertile for the true believers, and to be their slaves upon their arrival, which did occur some time after the occurrences which I now relate; it was not the custom for the females of Souffra to lead the life of invisibility, permitted only to those who administer to the delights of the followers of the Koran; and although it was with exceeding modesty of demeanour, still did they on great occasions expose their charms to the public gaze, for which error, no doubt if they had had souls, beautiful as they were, they ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... your favorite Mephistopheles, you wrapped the mantle of invisibility about you, and ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... laughter of the boats had given way now to angry growls at his invisibility. He could hear them cursing him as they passed, and even casting doubts on the veracity of his visitors of the previous night. And these latter upheld their statements with such torrents of red-hot patois that, if they had come to grips and fought ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... truth than you suspect, Mr. Rogers," said Dr. Bird. "It is not quite a matter of invisibility, but something pretty close to it. It ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... sorceress of the enchanted Isle of Increase Unsought. The white Castle of the Quest, with its three champions and their ladies, Aurea, Atra, and Viridis; the yellow dwarfs, the magic boat, the wicked Red Knight, and his den, the Red Hold; the rings and spells and charms and garments of invisibility are like the wilder parts of Malory or ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... named. In the Father are they all, and He it is whom the Outer Worlds behold [as men behold] the starry sky at night. Even as men [so gazing into the night] desire to see the Sun, so do the Outer Worlds desire to see Him because of the very Invisibility which surrounds Him. He it is who to the aeons gives life perpetually, and by His Word hath the Indivisible ... the Monad in order to know it. For it is by His Word that the Holy Pleroma exists. This is the Father, the Second Creator, by the breath of whose Mouth Providence (Pronoia) ...
— The Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh

... extreme youth once more, and the Owl was forced to be resigned. The small tent in which guard and prisoner were to sleep was almost in the center of the camp and Robert truly would have needed wings and the power of invisibility to escape then. Instead of it he let the thought pass for a while and went to sleep ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler

... had time to think, the invisibility of the thing was not so incredible. The mounted creatures he had seen in the hold were evidence that the flier had visited some unknown planet, where weird life reigned. It was not beyond reason that such a planet should be inhabited by beings invisible ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson

... incautious moccasin. One of the savages heard it, gave a warning cry, and in an instant the whole party threw themselves flat upon the earth, with the wall of the Council House between themselves and that point in the forest from which the sound had come. Silence and invisibility followed, yet the forest ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler

... I walk in the avenue, and eat all the delightful dinners without seeing the spots upon the table-cloth, and behold all the beautiful Aurelias without swearing at old Carbuncle. I am the guest who, for the small price of invisibility, drinks only the best wines, and talks only to the most agreeable people. That is something, I can tell you, for you might be asked to lead out old Mrs. Peony. My fancy slips in between you and Aurelia, sit you never so closely together. It not only hears what she says, but it perceives ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis

... had one effect, it revealed me to my schoolfellows as an existence. From that time forth I lay no longer under the stigma of invisibility; I had produced my material shape and had thrown my shadow for a moment into a legend. But, in other respects, things went on much ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... given him a coat just like a bunch of dried reeds and the shadows between, and he does the rest by standing with his bead stuck straight up and as still as a brass idol. Result—invisibility. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... perceives that twelve men stagger beneath the weight she proposes to throw. He is, however, somewhat reassured when Siegfried whispers he need but go through the motions, while his friend, concealed by the Tarncappe,—the cloak of invisibility which endows the wearer with the strength of twelve men,—will perform the required feats in ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... thought of putting the inhabitants to death; but the thought in his mind brought the storm again, and his ship went down, and he was drowned. But at last the remnant of them landed, and fought a battle with the Gods, and defeated them; whereafter the Gods put a druid invisibility on themselves, and retired into the hills; and there in their fairy palaces they remain to this day; indeed they do. They went back into the inwardness of things; whence, however, they were always appearing, and again vanishing into it; and all the old literature of Ireland is thridded ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... steadying effect. Your brain clears. The things that loomed so large, the "Flandria," and the English Field Ambulance and its miseries, and the terrifying recklessness of its Commandant, are reduced suddenly to invisibility. You can see nothing but the second Waterloo. You forget that you have ever been a prisoner in an Hotel-Hospital. You understand the mystic fascination of the road under your windows, going south-east from Ghent to Brussels, somewhere towards Waterloo. You are reconciled to the ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair

... glanced down like sheaves of dazzling silver arrows; and over the water, and softly riding down the glen, came soft, filmy clouds of mist, so fine and delicate that they constantly faded into invisibility; while every now and then there were passing glimpses of colour appearing and disappearing over the rushing torrent, as if there had been a rainbow somewhere up above—one which had broken up, and these were its fragments being ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn

... without a word of explanation had roused Desmond's anxiety. He suspected a fresh supply of tobacco; and this sudden invisibility confirmed his worst fears. He spoke of them to his wife after breakfast: and for all her radiant hopefulness of heart, she had small consolation to ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... the pirate has solved the secret of invisibility. No wonder the Air Guardsmen couldn't find ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell

... that, after a very little adjustment of the helm, the stars remained stationary in the mirror of the metacompass, showing that I had escaped from the influence of the Earth's rotation. It was of course impossible to measure the distance traversed during the invisibility of the Earth, but I reckoned that I had made above 500 miles between 1h. and 2h. A.M., and that at 4h. I was not less than 4800 miles from the surface. With this inference the indication of my barycrite substantially agreed. The latter instrument consisted of a spring whose deflection ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... been a good thing to have had a coat of invisibility, wherein to have watched little Ruth, when she was left to herself in John Westlock's chambers, and John and her brother were talking thus, over their wine! The gentle way in which she tried to get up a little conversation with the fiery-faced ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... tidings. We, ourselves, must look back upon a hundred versts of fair smiling country that we had conquered with the sacrifice of many thousands of lives and surrendered without the giving of a blow. And always the force that compelled us to this was sinister and ironical by its invisibility. ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... us up the great Col, and whirled round a corner, suddenly a battalion of magnificent white warrior-mountains sprang at us from an ambush of invisibility. Then, no sooner had they struck awe to our hearts with their warlike majesty, than, repentant, they turned into lovely white ladies, bidding us welcome to the rich, ripe figs and purple grapes which they ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... streaks of light and tremulous spots, different colored clouds passing over their epidermis with every thrill. The cuttlefish and ink fish, upon perceiving that they are pursued, enwrap themselves in a cloud of invisibility, just as did the enchanters of old in the books of chivalry, darkening the water with the ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... aforesaid snob would as soon question His Grace about the state of His Grace's soul. I, on the other hand, whenever human company is denied me, have often a desire to read. Reading, I prefer cut edges, because a paper-knife is one of the things that have the gift of invisibility whenever they are wanted; and because one's thumb, in prising open the pages, so often affects the text. Many volumes have I thus mutilated, and I hope that in the sale-rooms of a sentimental posterity they may fetch ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... sublime peace. Man's puny form were from this height as undistinguishable as the blades of grass in the meadows below. I know, that, if all the world stood beneath, and strained their vision to the utmost upon the very spot where I stand, I should still be in the strict privacy of invisibility. This isolation I pine for. But I can never, never ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... of the wood came the sharp crack of rifles, the zip-zip of bullets, the shouts of men who had given up the game of invisibility. It was a sharp encounter one night when the Loyal North Lancashires held the village of Vaux, and our men brought back many German helmets and other trophies as proofs of victory. Then to bed in the village, and a good night's rest, as when English knights fought ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... with great presence of mind, a new kind and new size of man. It was a more spirited, more original, more unconquerable and bewildering way of fighting than anybody had thought of before. To be suddenly in an enemy's presence a new kind and new size of man—colossal, baffling—to turn into invisibility before him, into intangibility, into another kind of being before the enemy's eyes, so that he could not possibly tell what to do, and so that none of the things that he had thought of to do would ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... his time and energies and the enemy gunfire be misdirected. In Italy I saw dummy guns so made as to deceive the very elect at a distance of a few thousand feet. The camouflage of concealment aims either at invisibility or imitation; I have seen a supply train look like a row of cottages, its smoke-stack a chimney, with the tops of sham palings running along the back of the engine and creepers painted up its sides. But that was a flight of the imagination; the commonest camouflage is merely to ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells

... the grey dawn grew nearer, confidence fled. He was suddenly conscious of the strength and invisibility of the thing that he was fighting. He must do something. If he were compelled to sit, silently, quietly, with his hands folded, much longer, he would go mad. But it was absurd—Stephen, about whom he had made so many plans, Stephen, concerning whom there had been ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... the stars paled to indistinctness, then to invisibility, and the landscape came into view in the fresh, chilly dawn, showing a strong grey horse feeding with Fancy and Bunyip, two hundred yards away. I was in no hurry to start, but my friends were like greyhounds in the leash. Therefore, whilst I dozed off to sleep, they packed ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... 174. fern-seed. A very common superstition, which still survives, is that the seeds of the fern have power to confer invisibility. ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... foraging parties on opposite sides had been known to combine forces under a private truce, or had fought brisk, bitter skirmishes to decide which would collect the spoils. If there remained a hog or chicken still running loose, it certainly possessed the power of invisibility. ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton

... except they be agreed?' And if we reflect upon the history of our own feelings and realisation of God's presence with us, we shall see that impurity always drew a membrane over the eye of our souls, or cast a mist of invisibility over the heavens. The smallest sin hides God from us. A very, very little grain of dye stuff will darken miles of a river, and make it incapable of reflecting the blue sky and the sparkling stars. The least evil done and loved blurs and blots, if it does not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... the tramp of horses, but saw the shadowy figures of several men hovering on what may be termed the line of invisibility. Sometimes they were distinguished quite clearly, and then seemed to vanish; but the youths could ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis

... attitude was of one looking forward the length of the schooner, or staring, rather, for his eyes were fixed and unblinking. I was only five feet away and directly in what should have been his line of vision. It was uncanny. I felt myself a ghost, what of my invisibility. I waved my hand back and forth, of course without effect; but when the moving shadow fell across his face I saw at once that he was susceptible to the impression. His face became more expectant and tense as he tried to analyze ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... divine people of Elysium who appeared to Fionn had rings "as thick as a three-ox goad."[516] Even the Fians are giants, and the skull of one of them could contain several men. The gods have also the attribute of invisibility, and are only seen by those to whom they wish to disclose themselves, or they have the power of concealing themselves in a magic mist. When they appear to mortals it is usually in mortal guise, sometimes in the form of a particular ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... sandals, and key, set out to look for the princess. After a two-days' journey he came to a mountain. Here he descended and began to look around. Finally he saw a huge rock, in which he found a small hole. He put the key in it, and the rock flew open. With his cap of invisibility on his head, he entered. There within he saw many ladies, who were confined in separate rooms. In the very last apartment he found the princess with a giant beside her. He went near the room of the princess, and opened the door with his key. ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... which possesses the attributes of invisibility and so on (is Brahman), on account of the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... itself; as if these trees hung out their leaves to listen to something that they could actually hear, as if these motionless creatures of the woodland were looking upon something that they could actually see; as if there were some great secret actually present and displayed in dead silence and invisibility before those only who possessed the senses necessary ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson



Words linked to "Invisibility" :   invisibleness, invisible



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