"Intangible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thrill which passed all up my body, and next all feeling save the consciousness of the loud beating of my heart ceased. Then it seemed that boy's eyes were inside my head and not outside, while along with them an intangible something pervaded my brain. The sensation at first was like the application of ether to the skin—a cool, numbing emotion. It was followed by a curious tingling feeling, as some dormant cells in my mind answered to the thought-transfer, ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... their shattered peaks reared high into the very heavens. A great silence reigned. There was no wind with us, and yet, even as we watched, a white cloud flitted past the virgin peak of Kolahoi—ghostly, intangible; and immediately, even as vultures assemble suddenly, no one knows whence, so did the clouds appear, surging over the gleaming shoulders of the mountain ridges, and up and round the grim precipices. We turned and hurried down the face of the glacier, and made ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... intangible compulsion, sitting there in the same small room, divided from her, but still there, still wearing that strange air ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... that she had never yet experienced, something that unknowingly she had been waiting for; something that must come to her at last. . . . She wondered if the young man sitting so close to her were ever stirred by such rapturous, intangible thoughts. With quickened interest she turned to look at him, and met his deep eyes intent on ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... he regarded business as a stepping-stone merely to the study of the law. The old merchant eyed him askance, but made no response. Occasionally the veteran of the market evinced a glimmer of enthusiasm over a prime article of butter, but anything so intangible as a young man's ambitious dreams was looked upon with a very cynical eye. Still he could not be a part of New York life and remain wholly sceptical in regard to the possibilities it offered to a young fellow ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... motioned him to sit beside me on the sofa. In the firelit room faint fragrance of the flowers with which he kept it filled crept to us, and around it we both glanced as if its spirit were not intangible; and at unspoken thought his hands ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... It relieved somewhat the present situation. Yet her avoidance of him he could construe only as contempt for a man who had played with her while bound by other ties. Sometimes he felt that he must explain to her how intangible were those bonds. Yet he was sufficiently conscious of their actual existence to feel that the difficulties of explanation were almost insurmountable. And Hilda, poor child, took his devotion entirely ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... congress (1901), which is raised by voluntary subscription and which is to amount to two hundred thousand pounds sterling. The half of this sum is to be devoted to the purchase of land in Palestine, the other half to remain an intangible common property of the Jewish people, which will by means of compound interest and gifts continually increase, so that at important junctures the interest may be used for ...
— Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil • Max Simon Nordau
... I saw some of it. Miss Strange, if I could get you into that house for ten minutes—not to see her but to pick up the loose intangible thread which I am sure is floating around in it ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... bright, though not as pure, as all things else; and now — father and friend were away from her, and she was alone. Yet still the sun shone — might it not again some time for her? Poor child, as she stood there the tears dropped fast, at that meeting of hope and sorrow; hope as intangible as the light, sorrow a thicker mantle than that of the cedar trees. And now the sunlight seemed to say 'Ask' — and the green glittering earth responded — "and ye shall receive." Elizabeth looked; — she heard them say it constantly. She did ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... happy she knew Katie was to have him with her. She talked of the responsibility it brought Katie, and as they talked it did seem responsibility, and responsibility was another thing which stole subtly up around her, chaining her with intangible—and ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... his elaborate politeness. There was a glare, not far removed from ferocity, in the great grey eyes, so little shaded by their lids and light eyelashes that occasionally a portion of the white eyeball above the iris was revealed, and there was an intangible brooding melancholy about the autocrat whose will was still law ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... on her bed, and later on in the train, striving to break the mental thongs which bound her to some intangible stake, Jan Cuxson was sitting in the secret places of the jungle temple, striving to break the bonds of raw hide by which he had found himself fastened to ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... those of Milton's heaven,—grated as horrible discords on my secret ear as the gates of Milton's other place. It was my gold that helped to make those hinges. And this I endured merely for the sake of enjoying the society, not of my dear newly-found cousins, but of two phantoms, intangible, unsatisfactory, unreal that hovered over their heads,—the phantom of wealth and the still more empty phantom of social position. But all this, understand, was before I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... trust men, in spite of the vilest betrayals? Love is indeed often the inspirer of subjective visions, creating in the beloved object the qualities it admires and the virtues it adores, powerless to accept what it is not willing to see, dwelling in a fortress guarded by intangible, and therefore indestructible, fiction and proof against the artillery of facts. Unorna's confidence was, however, not misplaced. The man whose promise she had received had told the truth when he had said that he had never ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... his head with one hand, and tapped his sword against his leg with the other, to stimulate his power of seeing these intangible combinations. ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... of a scornful smile flickered for a moment in the royal eyes. It was surely news enough for any man that she was a woman—beautiful still—possessing still that intangible and fatal gift of pleasing. The woman slowly faded from her eyes as they rested on the great soldier's face, and the Queen it was who, with a gracious gesture, bade him be seated. But the General remained standing. He alone perhaps ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... them: Mantar Falusaine at Hesperidum, Pietro Corrallani at Mars City and Cheng I K'an at Ophir. Among them, by a vast intangible network of communication, they discussed strategy and the situation on which it ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... buying an imitation or a second-class article patched up; but, on the whole, the American people has something like the best of the world to choose from. And what is true of the palpable and material things is equally true of the intangible and intellectual. ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... have said. It was perhaps merely incidental to her age, or sprang from that vague resemblance between her and one who outrivalled even what she had been as a girl; or from the occasional allusions Fort made to what he called "that little fairy princess." Something intangible, instinctive, gave her that jealousy. Until the death of her young cousin's lover she had felt safe, for she knew that Jimmy Fort would not hanker after another man's property; had he not proved that in old days, with herself, by running away from her? And she had often regretted having ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... motion for Independence passed by the Continental Congress on the second day of July, 1776, when the people of the rebelling British colonies in America, by action of their representatives, assumed a free and independent position. But a motion is intangible. It is an act, of which the announcement is the visible result. "A decent respect to the opinions of mankind" prompted the Congress on July 4, 1776, to "declare the causes" which impelled it to separation. ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... but by things palpable. Not to put too fine a point upon it, they were influenced by rank and wealth. No doubt the better sort of them believed that those who were superior to them in these indisputable respects were superior also in the more intangible qualities of sense and knowledge. But the mass of the old electors did not analyse very much: they liked to have one of their "betters" to represent them; if he was rich they respected him much; and if ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... no novelist loses more than George Sand,—who has so much to lose! The qualities sacrificed, though almost intangible, are essential to the force of her charm. The cement is taken away and the fabric coheres imperfectly; and whilst the beauties of her manner are blurred, its blemishes appear increased; the lengthiness, over-emphasis ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... rest was destined not to be undisturbed. Something awoke me. What! Was this night given over to ghosts and spirits intangible? Again the forms of men were gliding noiselessly about me. Above were the twinkling stars, around were busy men, and silence everywhere. With instinctive cautiousness I lay motionless, furtively noting the curious scene. A moment's careful ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... I am intangible; can't be seen, yet can be felt; am apparent to the taste—certainly to the touch, for I am pocketed daily, and there is no one who would not gladly grasp me at any time when offered; at the same time, I am almost always disagreeable, and very rarely desired. ...
— Harper's Young People, February 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... chuckle behind me—low, faint, but unmistakably malicious. The fate of poor Price flashed into my mind, and at the same time, I myself was watching myself fight on that same chesterfield with something horrible, unclean, intangible. I turned round instantaneously, feeling that the Albertus Magnus was at his hellish game again. With sudden horror I saw where the chuckle had come from. The statue had changed from the bronze-green to a fleshy-green. It was alive, and the ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... view thee, O world intangible, we touch thee, O world unknowable, we know thee, Inapprehensible, we ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... He was not outside; he was stifling in the dark room. The light had gone entirely, and he was struggling to free himself from an intangible enemy or friend; a thing that had, unknown to himself, evolved during those isolated years among the pines, and was restraining his ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... There is a subtle, intangible, but very real spirit influence breathing out of every man's presence. It is proportioned entirely to the strength of the man living within. With some it is very attractive. Sometimes it is positively repulsive. It is the expression of the man within. The presence becomes the mould of the spirit ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... air was heavy with fragrance, laden with moisture. Old Daniel wiped his forehead. He was heated, but so happy that he was not aware of it. He saw wonderful new lights over everything. He had wielded love, the one invincible weapon of the whole earth, and had conquered his intangible and dreadful enemy. When, for the sake of that little beloved life, his own life had become as nothing, old Daniel found himself superior to it. He sat there in the tumultuous heat of the May day, watching the child ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... docile. He chafed impatiently and angrily at Mara's obduracy, which, nevertheless, only increased his love for her. The deepest instincts of his nature made him feel that she belonged to him, and he to her. The barrier between them was so intangible that he was in a sort of rage that he could not brush it aside. Reflection always brought him back to the conviction that she did love him. Her passionate words: "If my heart break a thousand times I will never speak to you again," grew ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... demonstration of an exact science, they are laughed to scorn, their force is unconsciously admitted in a hundred cant phrases, such as, "He was under an evil influence,"—"She makes you feel better because she is so cheerful," etc., etc.—Both these things here alluded to as forces are intangible, and yet are real proofs ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... face there was the light of overpowering love together with the intangible pride so marked on the representations of profane deities. But the most manifest emotions were the great yearning and entreaty. They were marked in the attitude of the head thrown back, in the outstretched arms and in the bent knee. That there was more hopeful expectancy ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... and spoon find no place in his household. The rice and fish are boiled in a pot and then allowed to cool in the same vessel or poured out to cool in a large earthen or wooden bowl. Then Mr. Tao together with Mrs. Tao and all the young Taos squat on their heels around the mixture and satisfy that intangible thing called the appetite. They do not use chop sticks as the Chinese do, but the rice and fish are caught in a hollow formed by the first three fingers of the right hand. The thumb is then placed behind the mass. It is raised up and poised before the mouth, ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... overlooking the party, with his back to the fire, appeared displeased at their levity—shook his head, and was on the point of speaking one of those polite but cynical reproofs, whose irony, cold and intangible, intimidated the less potent spirits of the club-room. But he dismissed it with a little shrug. And a minute after, Major O'Neill and Arthur Slowe became aware that Dangerfield had glided behind them, and was looking serenely, like themselves, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of actions around her by what she had heard, she could not doubt she had received but a too true sample of experiences innumerable. One result was, that, young as was Hester, she no longer shrank from the thought of that invisible, intangible solvent in which the generations of man vanish from the eyes of their fellows. She said to herself what a blessed thing was death for countless human myriads—yea doubtless for the whole race! It looked sad enough for an end; but then it was not the end; while but ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... ours; it consists of the Mother, the Father (Saint Joseph), and the Child—with Saint Anne looming in the background (the grandmother is an important personage in the patriarchal family). The Creator of all things and the Holy Ghost have evaporated; they are too intangible and non-human. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... water." A more temperate judgment is that of another, who says that he "took part without discredit in the choir of singers who were men of action too." Licia is what a typical sonnet-cycle ought to be, a delicate and almost intangible thread of story on which are strung the separate sonnet-pearls. In this case the jewels have a particular finish. Fletcher has adopted the idea of a series of quatrains, often extending the number to four, and a concluding couplet, which he seems fond of utilising to give an epigrammatic ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... that we mutually extend to each other through life; but we shall leave on one side legal or positive justice, which is merely the organisation of one side of social justice. We shall occupy ourselves above all with that vague but inevitable justice, intangible and yet so effective, which accompanies and sets its seal upon every action of our life; which approves or disapproves, rewards or punishes. Does this come from without? Does an inflexible, undeceivable moral principle exist, ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... of it. This power of three men to get together, steal the privilege from the people, and by their joint action to produce a fourth body (corpus), behind which they hide and push their schemes—an intangible something which outlives them all—that is the power that is undermining this government. It's against the Constitution. Old Chief Justice Marshall in his verdict (which ushered in the reign of corporations, in this country) distinctly said that it was based on usurpation, ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... later they stood together as the aircar passed over the Kraggork Swamps—pleasantly close together, von Schlichten realized. For the moment, he could almost forget the queer, intangible tension that had been growing steadily, and the feeling that things were nearing a breaking point ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... figure perfectly, from the azure bows on her shoulders to the ribbon around her waist; and that the hem of its billowy skirt showed a foot which had the reputation of being the smallest foot south of Mason and Dixon's Line! But it was something more intangible than this which kept Courtland ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... that she loved him," said Henry, "I should have hesitated a long time before seeking to fasten the murder on him. I may have only a vague regard for justice, for abstract right is so intangible; but I have a strong ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... forward daily, hourly, to the anguish of her departure. She would vanish out of his life, intangible as a melted snow-flake, and only memory would stay behind to tell him he had known and loved her. Why should this be so hard to bear? If she stayed, he dared not tell her she was dear to him; he dared not stretch forth his hand to help her. In all the world there was no creature more ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... in a whirl of thought myself. I had lost a pupil; my purse was leaner than ever, my responsibilities heavier; yet intangible joys were storming my old heart, and it was athrill with visions of youth and hope and love, although I saw them through windows doubly ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... opened. The same year the great Duke had died, but the opening of the railway, with the mayor and all the magistrates and the volunteer band in attendance, had made far the greater stir in West Penwith. Iron Dukes were intangible creatures compared with iron engines, although the Parson had preached about the former and seemed to think, as some parishioners said, that it might have been the Almighty Himself who had passed away. Wellington had gone, but the railway had come—therein lay the difference; and Ishmael ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... teaches us to see something of the intangible forces that override personal preferences and hinder the direct application of principles ...
— A Guide to Methods and Observation in History - Studies in High School Observation • Calvin Olin Davis
... very clever in this somewhat abstruse game, for she possesses her mother's spirit of inquiry and love of reasoning, and she passes entire evenings with Arthur, pursuing the most perplexing and intangible subjects. She and Arthur are admirably matched in this game; for if she is unparalleled in the quickness with which she will follow up a clue and triumphantly announce the mysterious object, after asking eighteen or nineteen ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... kindness received. One says he owes the money which he got, another a consulship, another a province. These, however, are but the outward tokens of good services, not the services themselves. A benefit is to the hand something intangible; it is a process in the mind. There is a world of difference between the material of a benefit and the benefit itself. Hence the reality of a benefit lies not in gold, nor silver, but in the good will of the giver. The things which we hold in our hands, which we look at, and on which ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... you may, for it is full of malaria," said Miriam; she went on, hinting at an intangible confession, such as persons with overburdened hearts often make to children or dumb animals, or to holes in the earth, where they think their secrets may be at once revealed and buried. "Those who come too near me are in danger of great mischiefs, I do assure you. Take warning, therefore! It is ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... aspect of life, and seemed to float forth from the dark canvas like a holy spirit of beauty and blessing. Shadow and Substance—dead mother and living child—these twain gazed on each other through cloud-veils of impenetrable mystery,—nor is it impossible to conceive that some intangible contact between them might, through the transference of a thought, a longing, a prayer, have been realised at that mystic moment. With a sudden cry of irresistible emotion Maryllia stretched out her arms, and dropping on her knees, broke out into a ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... of Clarissa's visits to the painter's lodgings? what possible reason could she have for going there? Miss Granger's suspicions were shapeless and intangible as yet, but she did suspect. More than once—many times, in fact—during the painting of the portrait, she had seen, or had imagined she could see, signs and tokens of a closer intimacy between the painter and ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... willingness and eagerness of them all to resist at the cost of their lives and fortunes had been abundantly expressed. Had there been an armed force with which they could have fought, the way would have been easy; but there was nothing palpable here: only that intangible Law, which they had never yet broken, and their uniform loyalty to which, in their disputes with England, had given them strength and advantage. Must they defy it now, in the cause of liberty, and engage in a scuffle with the king's officers, in which the latter would be technically at least ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... or Wily, or any of the members of Wily's lock-step staff were Authority. Rather, they all gave obeisance to the intangible Authority of Science, and stood together as self-appointed vicars of that Authority, demanding penance for the slightest blasphemy against it. And each one stood in living terror of ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... fantastic images such as he employed for the first two parts of the Divina Commedia, but are things of the spirit, viz., knowledge, beauty, faith, love, joy; and he is aided in making visible those invisible entities of the spiritual life by such intangible things as sound, motion ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... gigantic forms became extinct. Then she tried smaller and more agile forms with larger brains—less flesh and more wit. On this line Nature continued to work till she produced her masterpiece in man—a rather feeble and nearly weaponless animal, but with an intangible armory of weapons and tools in his brain that enables him to put all creatures ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... reasoned consistently, but something warm within her gave the lie to this cold disposition of their friendship. She did not want to let him go his way. She had no intention of letting him go. She could not express it, but in some intangible way he belonged to her. As a brother might, she told herself; not because Blister Haines had married them when they had gone to him in their hurry to solve a difficulty. Not for that reason at all, but because from the ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... illness, because they always free us from some rule, and its "prejudice," grateful to the God, devil, sheep, and worm in us, inquisitive to a fault, investigators to the point of cruelty, with unhesitating fingers for the intangible, with teeth and stomachs for the most indigestible, ready for any business that requires sagacity and acute senses, ready for every adventure, owing to an excess of "free will", with anterior and posterior souls, into the ultimate intentions of which it is difficult to pry, with ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... already she knew about Annie. But what could she know? Girls like Annie were outside her ken. What could his mother know about life? The day did not help his dissatisfaction. The fog had not descended upon the town, but it had sent as its forerunner a wet sea mist, dim and intangible, depressing because it removed all beauty and did not leave even challenging ugliness ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... still talking about Mina Raff. She wouldn't attract him, Lee Randon, in the least, he was sure of that ... no wistful April moon. What, then, did engage him? He was unable to say, he didn't know. It was something intangible, a charm without definite form; and his thoughts returned to Cytherea—if he could grasp the secret of her fascination he would be able to settle a great many disturbing feelings and needs. Yes, what she mutely expressed was what, beneath his comprehension, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... wrong with it?" Dicky asked belligerently. "Oh, you mean figure posing! She wouldn't have to do that at all if she didn't want to. Plenty of good nudes. It's the intangible, high-bred look and ability to wear clothes ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... magnetic disturbances, there is an unusual amount of immortal food. Should we try to resist it, there would eventually be a greater pressure without than within, and we should assimilate involuntarily. We are part of the intangible universe, and can feel no hunger that is not instantly appeased, neither can we ever ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... and, like some fabled monster of the wave, breathing fire, and making the shores resound with its deep respirations. Then there is something mysterious, even awful, in the power of steam. See it curling up against a blue sky, some rosy morning—graceful, floating, intangible, and to all appearance the softest and gentlest of all spiritual things; and then think that it is this fairy spirit that keeps all the world alive and hot with motion; think how excellent a servant it is, doing all sorts ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... clearly except his inability to form a definite opinion of the man. On the one side was the weight of prejudice, of preconceived judgment; and on the other he could place only the effect of a personal magnetism which was as real and as intangible as light or colour. ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... society to-day than the varied and multitudinous associations for the amelioration of human poverty, ignorance, and crime; and nothing more depressing than the seeming immense waste of force scattered in these innumerable directions with results so intangible and undefined. From all the discussions we hear in the halls of legislation, and on the popular platform, on the relations of capital and labor, finance, free trade, land monopoly, taxation, individualism, and socialism, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... turned cool, and Elizabeth, with a little shiver, had drawn her furs around her neck. All through the day, during the luncheon in an unpretentious little inn, and the leisurely homeward drive, she had been once more entirely herself, pleasant and sympathetic, ignoring absolutely the intangible barrier which had grown up between them, soon to be thrown down for ever or to remain for ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of a creature with a large discourse of imaginative fears: a shadow would have been enough to relax its hold. And she had found a will like that of a crab or a boa-constrictor, which goes on pinching or crushing without alarm at thunder. Not that Grandcourt was without calculation of the intangible effects which were the chief means of mastery; indeed, he had a surprising acuteness in detecting that situation of feeling in Gwendolen which made her proud and rebellious spirit dumb and ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... control. But at the same time the necessity for decided action, if I was to save his life, came to me with an intense relief. No matter what animated him for the moment, Shorthouse was only a man; it was flesh and blood I had to contend with and not the intangible powers. Only a few hours before I had seen him cleaning his gun, smoking his pipe, knocking the billiard balls about with very human clumsiness, and the picture flashed across my mind with the ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... would not matter for a while. He could afford to drift. His genius would ripen, he told himself, and time was on his side. So he drifted, very happy and content, ripening. And being overlaid all the time, deeper and thicker, with this intangible, transparent, strong wall, hemming him in, shutting in the gold, just like that little joss ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... perseverance enough after the form that baffles and eludes you. Beauty is a thing severe and unapproachable, never to be won by a languid lover. You must lie in wait for her coming and take her unawares, press her hard and clasp her in a tight embrace, and force her to yield. Form is a Proteus more intangible and more manifold than the Proteus of the legend; compelled, only after long wrestling, to stand forth manifest in his true aspect. Some of you are satisfied with the first shape, or at most by the second or the third that appears. Not thus wrestle the victors, the unvanquished ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac
... his affection there was indeed, to display to the eyes of her world. But it was for intangible proof that Susan's heart longed day after day. In spite of comment and of envy from the office, in spite of the flowers and messages and calls upon which Auntie and the girls were placing such flattering significance, Susan was far too honest with life ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... another footprint—much more frequent—the smooth, inward-toed track of moccasins. The thicket grew more dense and difficult as he went on, yet he seemed to glide through its density and darkness—an obscurity that now seemed to be stirred by other moving objects, dimly seen, and as uncertain and intangible as sunlit leaves thrilled by the wind, yet bearing a strange resemblance to human figures! Pressing a few yards further, he himself presently became a part of this shadowy procession, which on closer scrutiny revealed ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... cannot think of another example of such rapid success," continued Finot, looking from des Lupeaulx to Lucien. "There are two sorts of success in Paris: there is a fortune in solid cash, which any one can amass, and there is the intangible fortune of connections, position, or a footing in certain circles inaccessible for certain persons, however rich they may be. Now ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... simple but wonderfully effective embroidered linen gown, then her two sons, likely enough boys, and then Anne Wellington with Prince Koltsoff. She almost touched Armitage as she passed; the skirt of her lingerie frock swished against his ankles and behind she left, not perfume, but an intangible essence suggestive, somehow, of the very personality of the cool, beautiful, lithe young woman. As Armitage turned in response to Thornton's prod in the ribs, he met her eyes in full. But she gave no sign of recognition, and of course Armitage ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... as are intangible: rights, for instance, such as inheritance, usufruct, and obligations, however acquired. And it is no objection to this definition that an inheritance comprises things which are corporeal; for the fruits of land enjoyed by a usufructuary ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... livelihood, when he copied out the HELOISE for DILETTANTE ladies; and therein showed that strange eccentric prudence which guided him among so many thousand follies and insanities. It would be well for all of the GENUS IRRITABILE thus to add something of skilled labour to intangible brain- work. To find the right word is so doubtful a success and lies so near to failure, that there is no satisfaction in a year of it; but we all know when we have formed a letter perfectly; and a stupid artist, right or wrong, is almost equally certain he has ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cried. "But it's such a joke! Can't you see that it's nothing in the world except a perfectly delicious, perfectly intangible joke?" ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... finds it necessary to talk more than most men. He must also theorize extensively because of the very nature of theological discipline. Moreover, he is occupied particularly with those affairs of the inner life which are as intangible as they are important. His relation with people is largely a Sunday relation, or at any rate a religious one, and he meets them on the pacific side. Very naturally they reveal to him their best selves, and, true to Christian charity and training, ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... What a tangle he had fallen upon! Once again there seemed to confront him a colossal Juggernaut, a moving, crushing, intangible thing, beyond his power to ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... to me to be a little incongruous—or, at least, a little defective in that pure classical taste which the sculptor unquestionably possesses,—to put, what may be considered visible and invisible—or tangible and intangible—representations of the same person before you at the same time. If a representation of the figure of the duchess be necessary, it should not be in the form of a medallion. The pyramidal back-ground would doubtless have had a grander effect ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... had grown up together; had they been growing away from each other in some things since they had been older? Often it appeared so; but it was Marion chiefly who seemed to change; then, all at once, in some unspoken and intangible way, for a moment like this, she seemed to come suddenly back again, or he seemed to catch a glimpse of that in her, hidden, not altered, which might come back one of these days. Was it a glimpse, perhaps, like the sight the Lord has of each ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... change, the revolt from that change, then the correcting, hallowing, consoling rush of pity; at last, far off, thin and vague, yet not more vague than the most definite thoughts men have had through three centuries on a matter that has been so near their hearts, the new body—a passing light, a mere intangible, external effect, over those too rigid, or too formless faces; a dream that lingers a moment, retreating in the dawn, incomplete, aimless, helpless; a thing with faint hearing, faint memory, faint power of touch; a breath, a flame in the doorway, ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... white as snow just fallen, and must have required most faithful and religious care to keep it so. As for the volumes of the library, they are wired within the cases and turn their gilded backs upon the visitor, keeping their treasures of wit and wisdom just as intangible as if still in the unwrought ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... the Spirit of the Lord had departed from him. Who among us is not exposed to the assaults of that pestilence that walketh in darkness? and, alas! who among us can say that he has repelled the contagion? Subtly it creeps over us all, the stealthy intangible vapour, unfelt till it has quenched the lamp which alone lights the darkness of the mine, and clogged to suffocation ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... ironic inflection was not lost upon Thompson. It nettled him a little, but it was too intangible to be resented, and in any case he had no ready defence against that sort of thing. He took a third chair between the two of them and occupied himself a moment exterminating a few mosquitoes which had ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... a sudden silence. Gaunt felt the intangible calm that hung about this man: this woman saw beneath it flashes of some depth of passion, shown reluctant even to her, the slow heat of the gloomy soul below. It frightened her, but she yielded: her will, her purpose slept, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... Manitoba stands out in Canadian History as the battlefield of educational rights. Although the British North America Act, 1867,—that intangible charter of Canadian liberties—stipulates, section 93, that in the carving out of new Provinces in the vast domains of the North West Territories the existing educational rights guaranteed to the minority should be respected, yet, the ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... girls, in the same neighborly spirit, brought from their own humble households many tokens of their loving thoughtfulness. And never did one visit that little log house by the river without the consciousness of something received from the silvery-haired old teacher—a something intangible, perhaps, which they could not have expressed in words, but which, nevertheless, enriched the lives of those simple mountain people with a very real joy ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... preservation? For if it be said that the former creations are only the creations of our imagination, without objective value, may it not equally be said of the latter that they are only the creations of our senses? Who can assert that there is not an invisible and intangible world, perceived by the inward sense that lives in the service of the ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... the edge of the sleeping pool a grey shadow lurked amidst darker shadows. A faint scent of cigarette smoke hung about the silver beach—a drifting suggestion intangible as the magic ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... complaint in the eyes of the world. Her husband was not bound to tell her all that happened to him before he met her; and he had severed all connection with that unhappy young woman before he asked her, Anna Pynsent, to be his wife. Nan's grievance was one of those intangible grievances which bring the lines into so many women's faces and the pathos into their eyes—the grievance of having set up an idol and seen it fall. The Sydney Campion who had deceived and wronged a trusting girl ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... James. Slowly the hope that Obadiah might speak to him died away and he returned to the door. It still lacked an hour of midnight, when Marion, had promised to come to him. He was wildly impatient and to his impatience was added the fear that had filled him as he hovered over Obadiah, a nameless, intangible fear—something which he could not have analyzed and which clutched at his heart and urged him to follow the path that led to Marion's. For a time he resisted the impulse. What if she should come by another path while he was gone? He waited nervously in the edge of the forest, watching, ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... disagreeable odour and exhales a gas which affects the mucous membrane, causing in some individuals sneezing and inflammation of the eyes. One amateur fisherman of considerable experience and by no means susceptible to intangible irritations, and not to be diverted from his sport by trifles, has frequently been compelled to move from a favourite ground by a stream of the scum drifting to his anchored boat. The fumes gave intense smartness ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... the sort of revenge one reserved for a foe capable of appreciating its humor and malignity. The answer of laughter was one to which he was unused, and he was amazed to find that it had effected an understanding of some vague and intangible kind between him and Sylvia Garrison. She might not approve of him, he had no idea that she did; but she had struck a chord whose vibrations pleased and tantalized. She was provocative and, to a degree, mystifying, and the abrupt termination of their talk seemed to leave the ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... of all things, manifests himself to men, in lesser forms, according to this mythology, more and more human and less and less intangible. These forms are generally triads, and resolve themselves into a male deity, a female deity, and their child. Triad after triad brings the original Divinity into forms more and more earthly, till at last we find "that we have no longer to do with the ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... the knowledge that in one incomparable heart he reigned supreme, unchallenged, if only for the hour. Fatigue, anxiety, bitter recollection and present danger, were overwhelmed and forgotten in the nearness, the intangible presence of Iris. He looked up to the starry vault, and, yielding to the ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... they the products of some supreme force, or forces, heretofore unappreciated? The reply is clear and unquestionable. The supernatural must necessarily be a part of the Divine Essence, and consequently intangible. Not so the subjects of our inquiry. They are natural products, therefore, and the result of the operation of some power commensurate with the ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... of corn glistening and gleaming transfigured, silvery and present under the night-blue sky, throwing dark, substantial shadows, but themselves majestic and dimly present. She, like glimmering gossamer, seemed to burn among them, as they rose like cold fires to the silvery-bluish air. All was intangible, a burning of cold, glimmering, whitish-steely fires. He was afraid of the great moon-conflagration of the cornstacks rising above him. His heart grew smaller, it began to fuse like a bead. He knew ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... room—forever cogitating the imminent Potts. I did not enter the house oftener than I could help, for always in those rooms I felt a troubled presence, a homesick thing that pushed two frail white hands against an intangible but sufficing curtain that held it from those it sickened for. I could not long ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... almost solemnly. The detectives, in spite of their usual roughness and the bitterness of their resentment against Lupin, acted with reserve and discretion, astounded as they were at being allowed to touch that intangible being. ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... quiet content. She was surprised to find herself so much at her ease with him, and so mildly happy. They shared a secret together, and that of itself was an intangible bond linking him with her who had no ties with any one else. She liked him; had liked him from the first; and his unconcealed delight in her company was gratifying to a girl who heretofore had found none to offer her the gentle courtesies ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... him, his thoughts continually reverted to Salome, and that subtle sympathy which springs from the "fellow-being," that makes us "wondrous kind" to those whose pangs are fierce as ours, began faintly and shyly, but surely, to assert itself. A shadowy, intangible self-reproach brooded like a phantom over his generous heart, when, amidst the uncertainty that seemed to overhang the orphan's fate, he remembered the numberless manifestations of almost idolatrous affection which he had ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... firm. The old adage says that "Kissing goes by favor"; and favors, financial and otherwise, are given only to those who can offer something in return. The tendency to concentrate power and wealth extends even to the outer rim of the circle. It is an intangible conspiracy to corner the good things and send the poor away empty. As I see it going on round me, it ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... for carrying to practical success the ideal which he preached. But to assume that he must accordingly be adjudged a failure is to ignore the significance of the ideals to which he awakened the world. Much there was that was unattainable and intangible, but its value to mankind in the development of international relations ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... accident, contagion, and malignancy, we need not consider here, but only those intangible injuries that disable people who are relatively sound in the physical sense. It is true that nervous troubles may cause physical complications and that physical disease very often coexists with nervous illness, but it is better for us now to make an artificial separation. Just what ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... The intangible and shapeless suspicions which Ethel had caught from Leonora took a misty form and substance, only to be immediately dispelled in that inconstant mind by the sudden refreshing sound of Milly's voice: ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... brought up short by the solidity of the intangible barrier between their two languages. There were phrases in her own tongue which could not be translated into Eugenia's, because they represented ideas not existing there. She finally said ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... called good society, and this is why the Drawer desires to turn the altruistic sentiment of the world upon it in this season, set apart by common consent for usefulness. Unfortunate are the fortunate if they are lifted into a sphere which is sapless of delicacy of feeling for its own. Is this an intangible matter? Take hospitality, for instance. Does it consist in astonishing the invited, in overwhelming him with a sense of your own wealth, or felicity, or family, or cleverness even; in trying to absorb him in your concerns, your successes, your possessions, in simply what ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... understood. Thus five thousand pounds invested would speedily bring five thousand pounds per annum. Diana had often dreamed of the City of London as the seat of magic; and taking the City's contempt for authorcraft and the intangible as, from its point of view, justly founded, she had mixed her dream strangely with an ancient notion of the City's probity. Her broker's shaking head did not damp her ardour for shares to the full amount of her ability to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... nerveless fingers broke the only match he had, as he attempted to strike it on the step, and, holding his pipe before him, he sat staring into space. He had a hunted sense of wanting to avoid forever all human contact; an intangible shame burned within him, drying up the tender emotions which so recently ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... Rumor credited to him at least one of the deadliest chemical combinations employed by the allied armies. But it was merely rumor; nothing definite was known. These are things of which little is hinted and less said. None the less, intangible as were his practical achievements—whatever they might be—his reputation was substantial, enhanced, small doubt, by the very vagueness of his endeavors. The element of mystery, which his physical appearance tended not to allay, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... sure," she said. Alicia herself felt curiously buoyed up and capable, conscious of vague intuitions of immediate achievement. The lunch-table still lay between the two, but it had become in a manner intangible; the selves of them had drawn together, and regarded each other with absorbent eyes. In Hilda's there was an instant of ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... settled him in a likely place, and the rapt patience of the born angler had folded him close, she disposed herself comfortably in the thick grass, her back against a tree, and took up the shuttle of fancy to weave a wonderful daydream, as beautiful, intangible as the lacy, summer clouds ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... intangible but effective aids of Medicine, which exert their healthful influence through the nervous system. It is in fact a mental tonic. A writer in the London "Lancet" remarks that "a pleasing and lively melody can awake in a faded brain the ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... because they wished to purify the Church of England from what seemed to them great abuses; and the purpose of these men in emigrating to America was to lay the foundations of a state built upon their religious principles. These people came for an intangible something—liberty of conscience, a fuller life of the spirit—which has never commanded a price on any stock exchange in the ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... for diminishing the force of a custom which is the disgrace of civilization, seems to be the establishment of a court of honour, which should take cognizance of all those delicate and almost intangible offences which yet wound so deeply. The court established by Louis XIV might be taken as a model. No man now fights a duel when a fit apology has been offered, and it should be the duty of this court to weigh dispassionately the complaint of every man injured ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... intangible barrier, which despite all his efforts, forcibly prevented him from advancing one step further,—she was close within an arm's length of him—and yet he could not touch her! ... Nothing apparently divided them, save a small breadth of the Ardath blossoms gleaming ivory-soft in the moonlight ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... aware of the power and fascination of the mysterious, she exploited it with a profound understanding of the human heart. She mingled the realities of life with the mysteries of thought, and the sun of her revelations is always veiled by intangible clouds. From her gospel one might cull at random scores of phrases that defy human understanding. "Evil is nothing, no thing, mind or power," she says in Science and Health. "As manifested by mankind, it stands ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... besides flinging other refuse from its own windows. The uncontrollable and hopeless mass of decomposition so engendered, would have polluted the air, even if poverty and deprivation had not loaded it with their intangible impurities; the two bad sources combined made it almost insupportable. Through such an atmosphere, by a steep dark shaft of dirt and poison, the way lay. Yielding to his own disturbance of mind, and to his young companion's agitation, which became greater every instant, Mr. Jarvis ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... to purchase a single third-class fare. How was she to get back to Warrington in the morning? How was she to meet Dent at the registrar's office? She did not know; she felt also that she did not care. Already her marriage with Dent seemed to be removed into a dim and intangible future. She would marry him,—oh, yes—but when and how she did not know, she did not care. She could scarcely bring her thoughts to bear on the great and terrible subject which an hour ago had filled her ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... too many visitors, and she never noticed that Emmanuel was hunchbacked. Emmanuel, who was afraid and mortified in the presence of girls, made an exception in favor of Rainette. The little invalid, who was half petrified, was to him something intangible and far removed, something almost outside existence. Only on the evening when the fair Berthe kissed him on the lips, and the next day too, he avoided Rainette with an instinctive feeling of repulsion: he passed the house without stopping and hung his head: and he prowled about ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... branches are hands, claws—monstrous and menacing; those leaves no longer bright remind me of a hearse's plumes; their rustling—of the rustling and switching of a pall or winding-sheet. The trunk, black, sinuous, towering, is assuredly no piece of timber, but something pulpy, something intangible, something antagonistic, mystic, devilish. I turn from it and shudder. Then my mind reverts to the elm—the elm on which Sir Algernon hanged himself. I remember it is not more than twenty yards from where I stand. I stare down at the soil, at the clumps of crested dog's-tail ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... something—the sixth hiding-place! This one was intangible. Not one of them dared touch it. It was the very last resource, the nest-egg, the something put by for a rainy ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... way, was not insured) teaches the beautiful moral lesson that an excess of virtue is apt to be followed by a redundancy of happiness, and that he who would secure the felicity of to-day must disdain alike the evanescent shadows of yesterday and the intangible adumbrations of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... that I have not proceeded so far without starting objections. To meet that which is most grave, what shall I say when it is alleged that there is no order such as I have assumed in life; or, if there be, that it is insufficiently known, too intangible and complex, too various in different races and ages, to be made the subject of such an exposition as obtains of natural order? Were this assertion true, yet there would be good reason to retain our illusion; for the mind delights in order, and will invent it. ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... regardless where it should please the others to dispose themselves. He had no recollection of hearing Jarvo point the way through the trees to a path that led away, as far from them as a voice would carry, to the Ilex Tower whose key burned in Amory's pocket, promising radiant, intangible things to his imagination. St. George understood with magnificent unconcern that Amory and Rollo were gone off there to wait for the return of him and Jarvo; he took it for granted that Jarvo had grasped that ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... scientists based their conclusions were collected by the War Department itself. This indifference is the more curious because the Army had always been aware of what the War Department Policies and Programs Review Board called in 1947 "that intangible aspect of military life called prestige ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... therefore, through ever varying forms. To it—if we may for the moment make a distinction between the theoretical and practical life, or between ideas and their causative potency—must be attributed the constructive power which has built the world of morality, with its intangible but most real relations which bind man to man and age to age. It is the author of the organic institutions which, standing between the individual and the rudeness of nature, awaken in him the need, and give him the desire and the faculty, ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... length they began speaking. They had lost everything, absolutely everything, they said, what with the Boxers and the sack, all this long, unending Reign of Terror. But that they did not mind. They were bitter and beyond consolation because they had lost the intangible—their honour. Each one had had women of their households violated. One, with many hideous details, told me how ... soldiers came in and violated all his womankind, young and old. That account, muttered to me with trembling lips, was no invention. Their blanched and haggard faces showed that ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... little uncertain of her ground and a little fearful that she is not quite "up-to-date," while the second class of teacher is sometimes a little timid, and not quite sure that she is prepared to account for the rather subtle and intangible ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... This idea of some intangible force being exerted, may seem reasonless. Yet, my instinct warns me, that it is not so. In these things, reason seems to me less to be trusted ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... has not as yet been so clearly observed. The laws governing our social life are not so clearly understood as to permit of a clear generalization. Still, the opinions, pleas, and judgments of society serve as boundaries which are none the less real for being intangible. When men or women err—that is, pass out from the sphere in which they are accustomed to move—it is not as if the bird had intruded itself into the water, or the wild animal into the haunts of man. Annihilation is not the immediate result. People may do no more than elevate their eyebrows in ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... and lounge; to be at street-corners without intelligible reason; to be going anywhere when met; to be about many places rather than at any; to do nothing tangible, but to have an intention of performing a variety of intangible duties to-morrow or the day after. When this manifestation of the disease is observed, the observer will usually connect it with a vague impression once formed or received, that the patient was living a little too hard. He will scarcely have had leisure to ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... a life of solitude. The people with whom he talked were mere ghosts, intangible, not of his world. Sometimes, amid a crowd of human beings, he was stricken voiceless and motionless: he stared about him, and was bewildered, asking himself what ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... I beheld such a change in mortal man as there was in Mr. Allen, my old tutor, and rector of St. Anne's. And 'twas a baffling, intangible change. 'Twas as if the mask bad been torn from his face, for he was now just a plain adventurer that need not have imposed upon a soul. The coarse wine and coarse food of the lower coffee-houses of London had replaced the rich and abundant fare of Maryland. The next day was become ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... He said in a voice that was under command Of his will, "All your fears in a storm of this kind. There is something uncanny and weird in the wind; Intangible, viewless, it speeds on its course, And forests and oceans must yield to its force. What art has constructed with patience and toil, The wind in one second of time can despoil. It carries destruction and death and despair, Yet no man can follow it into its ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... was reviewed. One felt that it was the last review that many of the men were ever destined to see and it seemed to be peculiarly fitting that before they left for the field of battle they should see that figure,—the head of the Empire—that stood for freedom and that intangible something that had made them come thousands of miles to fight and, ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... falling off from Probation, which in its turn was a distinct falling-off from Miss Fothergill's initial story, The First Violin. The characters are dim, intangible, remote, possessing no reality even at the outset, and as they progress becoming even more estranged from our belief and sympathy. Jerome is too feeble to arouse even our resentment, which we mildly expend on Sara ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... her eye over them deftly, as if they were the separate strings of an instrument which could afford gratification to her only when swept lightly all at one time by her tingling finger tips, or, more likely, by the intangible ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... dee?" Amanda detected a change of tone, and thereafter took flight whenever she heard his step at the kitchen door. So Monday forenoon passed; Caleb brought water for her tubs and put out her clothes-line, but they had hardly spoken. The intangible monster of a misunderstanding had crept between them. But when at noon he asked as usual, though without looking at her, "Goin' to Sudleigh with the butter to-day?" Amanda had reached the limit of her endurance. It seemed to her that she could no longer bear this formal travesty ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... The difference is psychological, or, we may say, philosophical, and science is none the wiser for it. The mechanics and the chemistry of a machine are quite sufficient to account for it, plus the man behind it. To the physics and chemistry of a living body, we are compelled to add some intangible, unknowable principle or tendency that physics and chemistry cannot disclose or define. One hesitates to make such a statement lest he do violence to that oneness, that ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... 'Sweetheart' that homes with us would measure three and one half inches if it would spread its wings full width as do the moths of other species. No moth is more difficult to describe, because of the delicate blending of so many intangible shades. The front wings are a pale, brownish grey, with irregular markings of tan, and dark splotches outlined with fine deep brown lines. The edges are fluted and escalloped, each raised place being touched ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... would find him as unnerved as the man he must help. Yet, with all his heart and will, he was silently assuring himself that all would go well—must go well. He must not even fear failure, think failure, imagine failure. Strong confidence on his own part, he fully believed, would be definite, if intangible, ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... sea. On a calm day it is all lovely beyond the power of words. The sky is blue and brilliant with sunshine. The sea receives the dazzling rays and returns them in a myriad flashes. The water seems to have as many tints as the rainbow, and they are as changing and beautiful and intangible. A distant vessel, passing slowly with all her sails set, almost becalmed, suggests a dreamy and delicious existence that has not its rival. The coast of Normandy stretches far out of sight. In the distance are the Channel Islands, visible possibly on a clear day and with a strong ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... her assumed gaiety, however, the trip across the river was a silent one, and when the landing was reached and they hurried out of the settlement to the open country once more, both were acutely aware that the intangible rift was widening. It was as though they walked on opposite sides of the road, and neither could bridge the ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... being destined to perpetuate the race, but the strange and mysterious product of all our complicated desires which have been accumulating in us for centuries but which have been turned aside from their primitive and divine object and have wandered after a mystic, imperfectly perceived and intangible beauty. There are some women like that, who blossom only for our dreams, adorned with every poetical attribute of civilization, with that ideal luxury, coquetry and esthetic charm which surround woman, a living statue ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... keep her away. I am a poet; that is enough reason for her to slight me. Proud and aloof and cold as marble, what does Fame care for us? Yes, Dick is right. It's a poor game chasing illusions, hunting the intangible, pursuing dreams. Dreams? Why, ...
— Plays of Near & Far • Lord Dunsany
... being afar off, inaccessible, almost intangible,—like the millionaire employer to his humble workman, covered with sweat and grime, at the bottom of ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach it. Robert's love of Brigit makes little outward show, but I know that it is terribly real. We are never so near to our loved ones as when we have left them for God, but nearness of that intangible, invisible kind amounts to agony. At least, I think so. Robert's self-restraint is killing me. When we first met, he shook from head to foot, his very face quivered, but he said nothing. I felt that ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... with the Allies and with the enemy, and constituting for Greece a title of rights, the full possession of which cannot be modified. The War determines new rights which cannot invalidate the concessions already given, which, on the contrary, are reinforced and become intangible, but ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... something that had a reality compared with which the nervous explanation would have been coarse. Mrs. Stringham found herself from that hour, in other words, in presence of an explanation that remained a muffled and intangible form, but that, assuredly, should it take on sharpness, would explain everything and more than everything, would become instantly the light in which Milly was to ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... they did not make a special effort to get him through on time; the team needed him, the squad needed him, L. A. needed him. It was more like a college than a High School in those days, with its numbers and its spirit, that strong, intangible evidence of things not seen. There was something about it, a concentrated essence of Jimsy King and hundreds of lesser Jimsy Kings, which made it practically unconquerable. In the year before his final one the team reached its shining perfection and held it to the end. It is ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... more potent the more painful the spell. Jove and his brotherhood of gods, tottering with the giant assailings, I can bear, for the soul's hopes are not struck at in such contests; but your Oriental almighties are too much types of the intangible prototype to be meddled with without shuddering. One never connects what are called the attributes with Jupiter. I mention only what diminishes my delight at the wonder-workings of "Kehama," not what impeaches its power, which I confess ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... old-fur odors are inescapable in any peasant community and cling for a long time to the clothing of any traveler who sojourns there, be it ever so briefly. American soldiers in 1918-1919 became so accustomed to it that they felt something intangible was missing when they left the country and it was some time before a clever Yank thought of ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... another poet of this period, a mysterious and intangible personage, whose very name is doubtful, whose writings had great influence, and that no one appears to have seen, concerning whom we possess no contemporaneous information. Like Gower, strong ties bind him to the past; but Gower ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand |
