"Invulnerable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Julius in a general hiss expir'd, Sage Booth to Cibber cried, "Compute your gains; These Egypt dogs, and their old dowdy queens, But ill requite these habits and these scenes! To rob Corneille for such a motley piece— His geese were swans, but, zounds, thy swans are geese." Rubbing his firm, invulnerable brow, The bard replied, "The critics must allow, 'Twas ne'er in Caesar's destiny to run." Wils bow'd, and bless'd the gay, pacific pun. Mist's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... be remembered that fighters in those days were often cased in armor from crown to sole,—a preposterous armor, burdensome and unwieldy, but almost utterly invulnerable. Sword-blows might dint it for hours without doing damage; the danger in battle lay chiefly in simple over-exertion. This gives the ludicrous point to the demure narration made to ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... bowed; and through the mazes and briers of this weary life, their bleeding footsteps strayed not, for they had a clew! The mind seemed, as it were, to become visible and external as the frame decayed, and to cover the body with something of its own invulnerable power; so that whatever should have attacked the mortal and frail part, fell upon that which, imperishable and divine, resisted and ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with many interruptions from the Angekoks, who tried more than once to bewitch him, but finally gave it up, convinced that he was a great medicine-man himself, and therefore invulnerable. But before that they tried to foment a regular mutiny, the colony being by that time well under way, and Egede had to arrest and punish the leaders. The natives naturally clung to them, and when Egede had mastered their language and tried to make clear ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... so little regard for his country, that he would not act in defense of it, because he had quarreled with Agamemnon about a w—-e; and then afterward, animated by private resentment only, he went about killing people basely, I will call it, because he knew himself invulnerable; and yet, invulnerable as he was, he wore the strongest armor in the world; which I humbly apprehend to be a blunder; for a horse-shoe clapped to his vulnerable heel would have been sufficient. On the other hand, with submission to the favorers ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... kneeling Lapitha. The fourth tablet would be probably unintelligible to the general visitor without special explanation. Here the Centaurs are endeavouring to crush an enemy with huge blocks of stone. This particular enemy is the Caeneus of Greek fable, whom Neptune had rendered invulnerable to the effect of swords and clubs, and whom Centaurs are endeavouring to overcome by crushing his body with masses of rock. The fifth slab (5) presents a more cheerful view of the battle for the Lapithae; here two Centaurs are being overcome by two of their enemies in revenge for ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... he had not again and again insisted on its historical truth and theological importance, no changes in the views of his readers, no merely intellectual or historical criticism, could have touched him more than they can Virgil. As a poet he is {151} perfectly invulnerable by any such attacks: it is only so far as he deserted poetry for the pseudo-scientific matter-of-fact world of prose that he fails and irritates us. All the poetry of Paradise Lost is as true to-day as when it was first written: it is only the science and ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... delight of one kind of work and no other. When a mere imp of a boy, the heartless tormentor of a large and sententious stepmother, the despair of schoolmasters, the most ingenious of truants, a humorous ragamuffin invulnerable to punishment, it was already revealed to him that his mission in life was to be the observation and reproduction of human character, particularly in its humorous aspects. To this end Nature had gifted him with a face that was capable ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... work is usually thrown into a state of nervous prostration by the difficulties that beset his task. By a perusal of the following hints he may learn to acquire an invulnerable calm, and if he follows the directions given he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... had that morning invaded Fakreddin's camp; and among these were the Earl of Salisbury, Lord Robert de Vere, the Grand Masters of the Temple and the Hospital, Bisset the English knight, and Walter Espec, still unwounded, and fighting as if he bore a charmed life, and felt invulnerable to javelins ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... of nocturnal attacks and other adventures, is a kind of artistic novel. The postillion is the most original character in the book. Huge of stature, audacious and clever, he exercises a mysterious influence over the brigands, whom he inspires with a superstitious terror. Most of them, thinking him invulnerable, do not dare attack the travelers whom ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... plains into the sea," cried Ahmed Ismail. "The angels will fight by our side—so the Mullahs have said—-and no man who fights with faith will be hurt. All will be invulnerable. It is written, and the Mullahs have read the writing and translated ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... as the skins of such men may be presumed to be, not unfrequently writhed beneath the lashes which his tongue could inflict. To such a perfection had he carried his skill and power of fence, so certain was he in attack, so invulnerable when attacked, that few men cared to come within the reach of his forensic flail. To the old stagers who were generally opposed to him, the gentlemen who conducted prosecutions on the part of the Crown, and customarily spent their time and skill in trying to hang those marauders on the public ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... the story. Like to the heel of Achilles, I say, that axe would be the only gate by which death could enter his invulnerable flesh, or rather it alone could make ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... would I give to be invulnerable? and egad, I am almost weary of being a Man, and subject to beating: wou'd I were a Woman, a Man has but an ill time on't: if he has a mind to a Wench, the making Love is so plaguy tedious— then paying is to my Soul insupportable. But to be a Woman, to ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... little profit from her English honors: what has she had to do with these Transatlantic Colonies of England? An unfortunate Country, if the English would but think; liable to be strangled at any time, for England's quarrels: the Achilles'-heel to invulnerable England; a sad function for Hanover, if it be a proud one, and amazingly lucrative to some Hanoverians. The Country is very dear to his Britannic Majesty in one sense, very dear to Britain in another! Nay Germany itself, through ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... the losses were, the Confederates took but one prisoner. At the third charge a tall, broad-shouldered captain, who seemed, like another son of Thetis, almost invulnerable, darted impetuously ahead of his men and reached the summit of the defence. Useless bravery! In an instant a volley point blank swept away the charging men behind him, and a gunner's sabrethrust bore him to the ground within ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... then, all of a sudden, he ceased his leaping and bounding and howling, and dropped on the snow in a limp, lifeless heap, dead as last summer's lily-pads. One of the quills had driven straight through his left eye and into his brain. Was it any wonder if in time the Porcupine came to think himself invulnerable? ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... diabolical oracle, and used it with much effect in disseminating their teaching. One of these prophets, or preachers, however, had a short career. Three weeks after Lloyd's death, this man, having persuaded himself and his dupes that they were invulnerable, led them against a strong and well-garrisoned redoubt at Sentry Hill, between New Plymouth and Waitara. Early one fine morning, in solid column, they marched deliberately to within 150 yards of the fort, and ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... the All, and of its moral aim. The Indian mythology ends in the same ethics; and it would seem impossible for any fable to be invented to get any currency which was not moral. Aurora[117] forgot to ask youth for her lover, and though Tithonus is immortal, he is old, Achilles[118] is not quite invulnerable; the sacred waters did not wash the heel by which Thetis held him. Siegfried,[119] in the Niebelungen, is not quite immortal, for a leaf fell on his back whilst he was bathing in the dragon's blood, and that ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... preacher to a conventicle in Swan Alley, Coleman Street, with a small following (about fifty in number) took arms on the 6th January for the avowed purpose of establishing the Millennium. He was a violent enthusiast, and persuaded his followers that they were invulnerable. After exciting much alarm in the City, and skirmishing with the Trained Bands, they marched to Caen Wood. They were driven out by a party of guards, but again entered the City, where they were overpowered by the Trained Bands. The men were brought to trial and condemned; ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... boiling pot, and the breast section followed it promptly. Three or four minutes after the bowl of rice was placed immediately in front of the man, and the breast part of the chicken laid in the bowl on the rice. Then followed these words: "Now the gall is good, we shall live in the pueblo invulnerable to disease." ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... Mrs. Hastings with a laugh. "You see, he's highly eligible from our point of view, but at the same time he's apparently invulnerable. I believe," she added dryly, "that's the right ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... Instead of one bomb there might be a need for fifty. They would have to destroy the Park utterly, even its mountains. And the fallout from so many atom bombs simply could not be risked. The invaders were effectively invulnerable. ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... safety in the castrum puellarum, the maiden castle, a title in after days proudly (but perhaps not very justly) adapted to the supposed invulnerability of the fortress perched upon its rock. Very nearly invulnerable, however, it must have been in the days before artillery; too much so at least for one shut-up princess, who complained of her lofty prison as a place without verdure. If we may believe, notwithstanding the protest of that much-deceived antiquary the Laird ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... apprehension of the result if she could not be checked, every gun that would bear was turned upon her, and torpedos were exploded in her pathway by electricity. All these she treated with the silent contempt they merited from so invulnerable a monster. At length, as she reached a good easy range of the fort, her bow struck something, and she swung around as if to open fire. That was enough for the Rebels. With Schofield's army reaching out to cut off their retreat, and this dreadful thing about to tear the insides out of their ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... futility of Earth's best efforts against the advanced science of these invaders from far-off Rikor. Encased in their colossal machine-bodies of glittering metal, and armed with such terrible weapons as the black ray projector, the Shining Ones would be as invulnerable as men trampling ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... limbs he was made of bronze and in these he was invulnerable. But beneath a sinew in his ankle there was a vein that ran up to his neck and that was covered by a thin skin. If that vein were broken Talos ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... germ will do it, the prick of a finger, a draught of cold air; but a man can live on, suffering mental torture, month after month, year after year, and his weight will hardly decrease by a pound. You read of broken hearts, but there are no such things! Hearts are invulnerable, torture-proof, guaranteed ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... correct. Chambers had shot her bolt. Brimfield secured the ball by inches on a fourth down near the middle of the field and her first desperate attack, a skin-tackle play with St. Clair carrying the pigskin, piled through for nearly ten yards, proving that Chambers was no longer invulnerable. Carmine, still in control, called for more speed and still more. The Maroon-and-Grey warriors fairly dashed to their positions after a play. Chambers called time for an injured guard and substituted two new linesmen. Kendall and Harris were poked through left ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... bleeding from a dozen wounds and yet his activity was unabated. He was like a grizzly bear at bay. His men began to believe that his league with Satan, of which he obscenely boasted, had made him invulnerable. He was all that he had proclaimed himself to be, the wickedest and most fearsome pirate of the Western Ocean. And all the while, the slender, boyish Lieutenant Maynard, sailor and gentleman, had one aim in mind, and that was to ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... the reason that ash wood is generally used for tool handles. It was upon ash branches that witches were enabled to ride through the air; and those who ate on St. John's eve the red buds of the tree, were rendered invulnerable to witch influence. ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... moment from some inconveniences, she is heaping upon his head future accidents and perils; nor how cruel is the caution which prolongs the weakness of childhood in one who must bear the fatigues of a grown-up man. The fable says that, to render her son invulnerable, Thetis plunged him into the Styx. This allegory is beautiful and clear. The cruel mothers of whom I am speaking do far otherwise; by plunging their children into effeminacy they open their pores to ills of every kind, to which, when grown up, they ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... quiet strength of character would, in a measure, keep her safe from this troublesome spring disorder, but my uncle's account of her doings led me to fear that perhaps her wholesome armor of self-conceit was not so invulnerable as I ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... and protested; and when he found that we were invulnerable and unmoved, he uttered curses upon our heads so bitter that it seemed as though he had spent all his ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... Ajax, Ulysses, and other Greek warriors to obtain the dead body of Achilles, which was held by the Trojans. The story is that the goddess Thetis had dipped her son Achilles in the river Styx for the purpose of making him invulnerable, or safe from wounds by weapons. But as she held him by the ankles they were not wetted, and so he could be wounded in them. During the siege of Troy Apollo guided the arrow of Paris to this spot, and the great leader of the Greeks was killed. It is believed that the warrior in this ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... the only part of him that seems invulnerable,' says the fond father. 'What's that?' he yells, for the boy was talking again. He listened a minute, and it was right entertaining to watch his face work as the words come along. It registered all the evil that Scotland has suffered from her oppressors since they ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... only that ye breathed smoke and carried flames in your limbs, but that your flesh was of iron, invulnerable to arrows; that ye were stronger than birds, and carried the thunder and lightnings of the gods with which to kill; and that ye were able to walk through the air as well as ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... peon, the low caste chulo of Chihuahua, froze into the panic-stare of abject terror under the straight glance of her eye. The slightest motion of her tender hand to him augured a sudden death, for she was of Arizona's daughters, invulnerable in the armor of their self-reliant strength, a shield of lovely innocence, white as the snow ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... Achilles, the son of Thetis,—foretold in the day of Prometheus as a man who should far outstrip his own father in glory and greatness. Years had passed since the marriage of Thetis to King Peleus, and their son Achilles was now grown to manhood, a wonder of strength indeed, and, moreover, invulnerable. For his mother, forewarned of his death in the Trojan War, had dipped him in the sacred river Styx when he was a baby, so that he could take no hurt from any weapon. From head to foot she had plunged him in, only forgetting ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... and spread through almost every other district of the island, an old Koromantyn negro, the chief instigator and oracle of the insurgents in that parish, who had administered the fetish, or solemn oath, to the conspirators, and furnished them with a magical preparation, which was to render them invulnerable, was fortunately apprehended, convicted, and hung up with all his feathers and trumperies about him; and his execution struck the insurgents with a general panic, from which they never afterwards recovered. The examinations, which were taken at that period, first opened the ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... invulnerable than you are," replied Lucien, smiling. "This snake is quite harmless, and I should never touch one without taking papa's advice, even if it ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... greedily upon the hook, which fastens itself readily in their crooked bills. All these sea birds are clothed with a coat of feathers so thick and elastic that except in one or two places they are invulnerable to a bullet. ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... knowledge is advanced; and the public opinion of the civilized world is rapidly gaining an ascendency over mere brutal force.... It may be silenced by military power, but it cannot be conquered. It is elastic, irrepressible, and invulnerable to the weapons of ordinary warfare. It is that impassible, unextinguishable enemy of mere violence and arbitrary rule, which, like ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... wrong, being so majestical, To offer it the show of violence; For it is as the air invulnerable, And ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... pride, wound her vanity by making love to Dr. Harpe. No," he put the thought from him vehemently, "I'm not that kind of a hypocrite. But she can't be invulnerable—tell me her weaknesses. ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... twilight. May this not account in some measure for the attitude assumed by the Empress Dowager towards the Boxer superstitions of 1900, and their pretentions to be able at will to call to their aid legions of spirit-soldiers, while at the same time they were themselves invulnerable to the ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... the aboriginal lords of the land. At one such village Washington met a chief who had accompanied him on his memorable winter journey in 1753 to warn out the French, and elsewhere talked with Indians who had shot at him in the battle of the Monongahela and now expressed a belief that he must be invulnerable. At the Mingo Town they saw a war party of three score painted Iroquois on their way to fight the far distant Catawbas. Between the Indians and the white men peace nominally reigned, but rumors were flying of impending uprisings, and the Red Man's smouldering hate was soon to burst ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... members of the Mutual Burial Club, a masculine company, and not meet for females. The men pulled themselves together, remembering that their proudest quality was a stoic callousness that nothing could overthrow. They refilled pipes, ordered more beer, and resumed the mask of invulnerable solemnity. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... very singular condescension, have imprudently admitted the sophistry of the Gnostics. [291] Acknowledging that the literal sense is repugnant to every principle of faith as well as reason, they deem themselves secure and invulnerable behind the ample veil of allegory, which they carefully spread over every tender part ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... If Edmee had not triumphantly defended me by her confession, she had at least roused the greatest interest in my favour. A man who is loved by a beautiful woman carries with him a talisman that makes him invulnerable; all feel that his life is of greater value than ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... not disgraceful to be worsted by these men, for I am not the less brave because you pit me against an invulnerable enemy, nor does fire not burn because you throw into it something over which flames have no power, nor does iron lose its power of cutting, though you may wish to cut up a stone which is hard, impervious to blows, and of such a nature that hard tools are blunted ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... were foiled by the armour of Hobaddan; for the enchantress Hapacuson, studious of diverting the attention of the Sultan Misnar, had assisted Hobaddan with her counsel and with invulnerable arms; wherefore, seeing their labour vain and fruitless against the pretended and unconquerable Sultan, the hearts of Horam's warriors melted within them, and they fell away from the field of battle; ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... who was always at hand to guide and support him in the conflict, and to succor him in danger. Achilles, on the other hand, possessed a charmed life. He had been dipped by his mother Thetis, when an infant, in the river Styx, to render him invulnerable and immortal; and the immersion produced the effect intended in respect to all those parts of the body which the water laved. As, how ever, Thetis held the child by the ankles when she plunged him in, the ankles remained unaffected ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... believe in them! I know that in a few more hundreds of thousands of years we will be rid of material bodies and will become invincible and invulnerable. Then comes the Conquest of the Galaxy ... and then ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... We tried frying them, but the longer they fried the tougher they got. They were a little too large to swallow whole. Then we stewed them, and after a while we boiled them, and then we baked them, but every flank movement we would make on those mussels the more invulnerable they would get. We tried cutting them up with a hatchet, but they were so slick and tough the hatchet would not cut them. Well, we cooked them, and buttered them, and salted them, and peppered them, and battered them. They looked good, ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... progress in restoring the ancient values of caste, based solely on natural qualification and not on birth. Every nation on earth has its own distinctive misery-producing karma to deal with and remove; India, too, with her versatile and invulnerable spirit, shall prove herself equal to the ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... regretted more than himself upon the present occasion, but which quite settled the question. Nevertheless, he said, there WAS a gentleman present (and here he looked very hard at a tall farrier), who, having been engaged all his life in the manufacture of horseshoes, must be quite invulnerable to the power of witches, and who, he had no doubt, from his own reputation for bravery and good-nature, would readily accept the commission. The farrier politely thanked him for his good opinion, which it would always be his study to deserve, ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... perfect faith in the invulnerable superiority of his friends, he had not even looked at the master, but only at his destined victim. Yet as the word "two" rang out Johnny's attention was suddenly attracted to the surprising fact ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... to undertake and achieve such hardy enterprises because he wore enchanted arms, that accusation in the first place must fall on Homer ere it can reach Virgil. Achilles was as well provided with them as AEneas, though he was invulnerable without them; and Ariosto, the two Tassos (Bernardo and Torquato), even our own Spenser—in a word, all modern poets—have copied Homer, as well as Virgil; he is neither the first nor last, but in the midst of them, and therefore is safe if they are so. Who ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... like a spirit of forbearance; the return of rage for rage cannot be so effectually provoking. True gentleness, like an impenetrable armour, repels the most pointed shafts of malice: they cannot pierce through this invulnerable shield, but either fall hurtless to the ground, or return to wound the hand ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... servants. Roger Williams received a boy for his share. Many chiefs were executed at Boston and Plymouth on the charge of rebellion; among others, Captain Tom, chief of the Christian Indians at Natick, and Tispiquin, a noted warrior, reputed to be invulnerable, who had surrendered to Church on an implied promise ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... forfeiture of goods and chattels incurred;—sees no scourge waving over his head, or prison opening his gates upon him:—What is there to affright his conscience?—Conscience has got safely entrenched behind the Letter of the Law; sits there invulnerable, fortified with Cases and Reports so strongly on all sides;—that it is not preaching can ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... The Christian towers did their work in the midst of flames, particularly the Tower of Godfrey, on whose roof a golden cross shone. The leaders fought amidst piles of their dead and seemed to be invulnerable themselves. Breaches were made in the walls behind which stood a living barricade of Saracens. An Egyptian emissary was caught, his message to the besieged squeezed from him, and his body was then hurled from a catapult into the city. The wooden ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... 'not perhaps as wide as a church door or as deep as a well, but 'twill serve'; and be certain to send her below water in a few minutes.* [footnote... In these days of armour-clad warships, when plates of enormous thickness are relied on as invulnerable, our Naval Constructors appear to forget that the actual structural strength of such ships depends on the backing of the plates, which, be it ever so thick, would yield to the cramming blow ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... wrote His rank, and quartered his own coat. There is no king nor sovereign state That can fix a hero's rate; Each to all is venerable, Cap-a-pie invulnerable, Until he write, where all eyes rest, Slave or master on his breast. I saw men go up and down, In the country and the town, With this tablet on their neck, 'Judgment and a judge we seek.' Not to monarchs they repair, Nor ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the Doctor said grimly; "but the British subaltern is pretty well impervious to snubs; he belongs to the pachydermatous family of animals; his armor of self conceit renders him invulnerable against the milder forms of raillery. However, I think you can be trusted to hold your own with him, Miss Hannay, without much assistance from the Major or myself. Your real difficulty will lie rather in your struggle against ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... He had no money and little learning, but he had a conscience and he knew that he must be true to that conscience, come to him either weal or woe. Want renders most men vulnerable, but to it, he appeared, at this early age, absolutely invulnerable. Should he and that almost omnipotent inquisitor, public opinion, ever in the future come into collision upon any principle of action, a keen student of human nature might forsee that the young recusant could never be starved into silence ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... supposed that everyone regarded Jacky's eccentricities with the forgiving and loving spirit of his mother. Mr Sudberry, good man, did not mind much; he was out for a day's enjoyment, and having armed himself cap-a-pie with benevolence, was invulnerable. Not so the other members of the party, all of whom had to exercise a good deal of forbearance towards the boy. McAllister took him on his knee and gravely began to entertain him with a story, for which kindness Jacky kicked his shins and struggled ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... viewed by the Rebel soldiers in both forts, who were now out of range of our guns, and lined the walls. Few audiences have ever witnessed so imposing a sight. The great ram came on for a single-handed contest with the fleet. She was believed to be invulnerable, and had powerful double engines by which she could be easily handled; while our monitors were so slow-gaited that they were unable to offer any serious obstacle to her approach. Farragut himself seemed to place his chief dependence on his wooden vessels. Doubtless the crowd of Confederate ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... and my fellowes Are ministers of Fate, the Elements Of whom your swords are temper'd, may as well Wound the loud windes, or with bemockt-at-Stabs Kill the still closing waters, as diminish One dowle that's in my plumbe: My fellow ministers Are like-invulnerable: if you could hurt, Your swords are now too massie for your strengths, And will not be vplifted: But remember (For that's my businesse to you) that you three From Millaine did supplant good Prospero, Expos'd ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... adjoining dressing-room issued a prolonged "Y-ah!"—not the howl of a spoiled child, nor the protest of a captive gorilla, but the whole-souled utterance of a mighty son of Anak, whose amiability is invulnerable to weapons ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... to one who is bred a scholar, has the same effect that a good carriage of his person has on one who is to live in courts. The favour of women is so natural a passion, that I envied both the boys their success in the approbation of my guest; and I thought the only person invulnerable was my young trader. During the whole meal, I could observe in the children a mutual contempt and scorn of each other, arising from their different way of life and education, and took that occasion to advertise ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... indeed, the very first love which in her checkered career was really worthy of the name. She had supposed that all such things were passed and gone, that her heart was closed for ever, that she was invulnerable; and yet here she found herself clinging about the neck of this impetuous soldier and showing him all the shy fondness and the unselfish devotion of a young girl. From this instant Adrienne Lecouvreur never loved another man and never even looked at any other ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... either love vice, cherish crime, be pleased with depravity, or commit wrong; this decidedly turns the argument against them; they must either admit the most monstrous of all suppositions, or retire from behind the shield with which they have imagined they rendered themselves invulnerable. ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... Hidesato took another arrow, fitted it to the notch of the bow and let fly. Again the arrow hit the mark, it struck the centipede right in the middle of its head, only to glance off and fall to the ground. The centipede was invulnerable to weapons! When the Dragon King saw that even this brave warrior's arrows were powerless to kill the centipede, he lost heart and began to ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... the bullets had fallen about us as thick as hail. We could not account for this. Many of us had been hit by the balls, but a bruise or a graze of the skin was the worst consequence that had ensued. We were in a fair way to deem ourselves invulnerable. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... Valkyrs, or battle maidens, were either his daughters, like Brunhild, or the offspring of mortal kings, maidens who were privileged to remain immortal and invulnerable as long as they implicitly obeyed the god and remained virgins. They and their steeds were the personification of the clouds, their glittering weapons being the lightning flashes. The ancients imagined that they swept down to earth at Valfather's command, to choose among the slain in battle heroes ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... of successive excitements, now certain that it was invulnerable, now fearing an immediate descent of the enemy, and always longing for peace. In England the Orders in Council which provoked the war were now revoked, and Malcolm Fraser wrote that this must soon bring peace in America, especially since New England and New York were against the ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... Pieta of M. Angelo; had he led us from beneath the iridescent capitals of Denderah, by the contested line of Apelles, to the hues and the heaven of Perugino or Bellini, we might have been tempted to assoilzie from all staying of question or stroke of partisan the invulnerable aspect of his ghostly theory; but, if, with even partial regard to some of the circumstances which physically limited the attainments of each race, we follow their individual career, we shall find the points ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... knew, he might have thousands behind him. He owed not a man in Barbie. The appointments of Green Shutters were as brave as ever. The selling of his horses, the dismissal of his men, might mean the completion of a fortune, not its loss. Hitherto, then, he was invulnerable—so he reasoned. It was his son's disgrace that gave the men he had trodden under foot the first weapon they could use against him. That was why it was more damnable in Gourlay's eyes than the conduct of all the prodigals that ever lived. It had enabled his foes to get their knife into ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... for the possession of Mary Masters? If she were in danger would he not go down into the deep, or through fire to save her? Were not his old instincts of honesty and truth as strong in him as ever? Did manliness require that his heart should be invulnerable? If so he doubted whether he ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... a curse upon Israel, from Balaam, the latter did not say no; but only said, the Lord would not permit him to do what was required. He left neither to Balak nor to his messengers, any reason to conclude that his virtue was invulnerable. On the contrary, as the event plainly shows, his answer was just such a one as encouraged them to prosecute ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... proportion if successful. A father at his deathbed has been known to desire his son to take the first opportunity of matching a certain cock for a sum equal to his whole property, under a blind conviction of its being betuah, or invulnerable. ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... count of the shells afterward, and all the world knows now of the desperate and successful fight that the inhabitants waged against them. Men and women, boys and girls, blacks and whites, finding that the devils were invulnerable against rifle fire, sallied forth boldly with knives and choppers, and laid down a life for ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... let us suppose that because Christ, in His anticipation of suffering and death, knew Himself invulnerable, with not even a spot on His heel into which the arrow could go, therefore the conflict was an unreal or shadowy one. It was a true fight, and it was a real struggle that He was anticipating, thus calmly in these solemn words, as ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... Secure in these invulnerable envelopments, his worship had rested content, although severed from his own death-doing weapons, of rapier, poniard, and pistols, which were placed nevertheless, at no great distance from his chair. One offensive implement, indeed, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... and pervading, in relation to the whole system; but in the Christian they seem subordinate and incidental, have every appearance of being ingrafts, not outgrowths. Thirdly, in the apostolic age Judaism was a consolidated, petrified system, defended from outward influence on all sides by an invulnerable bigotry, a haughty exclusiveness; while Christianity was in a young and vigorous, an assimilating and formative, state. Fourthly, the overweening sectarian vanity and scorn of the Jews, despising, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Was she simply leading him on and on, guided blindly by woman's instinct to get as much as she could and to give as little as she dared? Or was she protected by a real indifference to him—the strongest, indeed the only invulnerable armor a woman can wear? Was she protecting herself? Or was it merely that he, weakened by his infatuation, was doing ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... consequence of this, he ordered his men to shoot any thieves who came near. A short time afterwards, another band approaching, one of the men was shot, who turned out to be a magician, and was till then thought invulnerable. He was tracked by his blood, and afterwards died of his wound. The next day some of Speke's men were lured into the huts of the natives by an invitation to dinner, but, when they got them there, they stripped them stark-naked and let them go again. At night the same ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... laughter. The hand and face and the old body laugh. No skinny, intellectual mirth, affecting but the lips! It was the merriment of an apple bobbing on the bough, or a brown stream running over rocks, or any other gay creature of earth. And with all was a great dignity, invulnerable to clods, and a kindly and noble beauty. By the light of that laughter much becomes clear—the right place of man upon earth, the entire suitability in life of very brightly-coloured petticoats, and the fact that old age ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... approbation, therefore, must ensure it credit and success, the Life of Dr. Johnson is, with the greatest propriety, dedicated to Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was the intimate and beloved friend of that great man; the friend, whom he declared to be 'the most invulnerable man he knew; whom, if he should quarrel with him, he should find the most difficulty how to abuse[54].' You, my dear Sir, studied him, and knew him well: you venerated and admired him. Yet, luminous as he was upon the whole, you perceived all the shades which mingled in the grand composition; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... more of that. Listen, dear girl, and follow my injunctions, as upon their strict observance depends our future happiness. To-morrow night I will conduct you to your poor deserted parent: together at his knees we will implore forgiveness. He will not be invulnerable to the tears and supplications of his child; and I will forget the wild dreams that have so long tyrannised over my kinder feelings, to fix all my thoughts upon love and Theodora. To the happy termination of these designs, however, ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... wild torrents fiercely glad! Who called you forth from night and utter death, From dark and icy caverns called you forth, Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks, For ever shattered and the same for ever? Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, Unceasing thunder and eternal foam? And who commanded (and the silence came), Here let the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... them. Through the closed doors resounded the tempestuous roar of the multitudes assembled around the Seraglio. Those within it trembled, and Halil Patrona stood there among them like an enchanter who knows that he is invulnerable, immortal. ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... not exist. The story had many repetitions, contradictions, and inferiorities. Later, the philological argument was used against it. These statements summarize the Wolfian theory. The contrariety in dialect form was thought to be an invulnerable argument against the unity of authorship; and for a time the epic of the ancient world was declared to be the work of many hands, the ballads sung by rhapsodists of many names; and the Iliad, with its astonishing display of genius, was declared to be authorless. Less than ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... darkness. There was not resistance enough to deploy infantry. A flash, a report, and a whistling bullet from some covert met us, but there were few casualties. I quite remember thinking at the time that Jackson was invulnerable, and that persons near him shared that quality. An officer, riding hard, overtook us, who proved to be the chief quartermaster of the army. He reported the wagon trains far behind, impeded by a bad road in Luray Valley. ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... what Marco Polo relates, that the inhabitants had certain stones of a charmed virtue inserted between the skin and the flesh of their right arms, which, through the power of diabolical enchantments, rendered them invulnerable. This island was an object of diligent ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... little defensive armor, and their principal weapon was the pike, eighteen feet long. Formed into these solid battalions, which, bristling with spears all around, received the technical appellation of the hedgehog, they presented an invulnerable front on every quarter. In the level field, with free scope allowed for action, they bore down all opposition, and received unshaken the most desperate charges of the steel- clad cavalry on their terrible array of pikes. They were too unwieldy, however, for rapid or complicated ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... vividness of colour in his countenance. At the foot, was a tall young gentleman, with high cheekbones and a Celtic nose, who had lately joined from Tipperary. The colonel sat in the centre of one side of the table, stiff in attitude, sententious in discourse, invulnerable in vanity; a fierce-looking navy captain, and the meek mayor of the town, supported him to the right and left. A few diners out, fathers of families, and men who played a good game of billiards, and preferred the society of ensigns, were the remainder of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... Ralas have ruled from this impregnable amphibian city. Its colossal metal dome is invulnerable to ordinary attack, and though solid and without openings it is always as light beneath the dome here as outside, since the Ralas' scientists contrived light-condensers and conductors that catch light outside and bring ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... detection or subsequent exposure will have the slightest effect with those over whose minds and passions he rules with such despotic sway. He cares not whom he insults, because, having covered his cowardice with the cloak of religious scruples, he is invulnerable, and will resent no retaliation that can be offered him. He has chalked out to himself a course of ambition which, though not of the highest kind—if the consentiens laus bonorum is indispensable to the aspirations of noble minds—has everything ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... fidelity; their station was marked by honors and emoluments; and some fortunate accidents soon introduced an opinion, that as long as the guards of the labarum were engaged in the execution of their office, they were secure and invulnerable amidst the darts of the enemy. In the second civil war, Licinius felt and dreaded the power of this consecrated banner, the sight of which, in the distress of battle, animated the soldiers of Constantine ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Allow for his point of view, and his survey is admirable. He is a large subject. I can not speak more or wiselier of him now, nor needs it; his works are true, to blame and praise him—the Siegfried of England, great and powerful, if not quite invulnerable, and of a might rather to destroy ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... many of the enemy fell, but he points out that Marcellus gained much glory by that battle, and that the Roman people took courage after their misfortunes, thinking that it was not against an unconquerable and invulnerable foe that they were fighting, but one who could be made to suffer as ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... different ways and by different methods they claimed attention. They claimed it incessantly, Louie, the eldest, by an attitude of assurance and superiority so stiff and hard that it seemed invulnerable; Emmy by sudden jerky enthusiasms, exaltations, intensities; Edie by an exaggerated animation, a false excitement. Edie would drop from a childish merriment to a childish pathos, when she would call herself "Poor me," and demand pity ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... ill at ease. Her distress was in marked contrast with the man's self-possession, which amounted almost to indifference. There was no spark visible of the fire which had flashed earlier in the day. It was as though he had steeled himself to remain invulnerable throughout the call. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... Ammonite god had had greater faith in his potent protection than Soames had in that of his unseen master. What should a servant of Mr. King fear from the officers of the law? How puny a thing was the law in comparison with the director of that secret, powerful, invulnerable organization whereof to-day he (Soames) ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... tame bears of California and Wyoming, but you cannot fool with the big Kadiac bears of Alaska with your little bow and arrow," that Young determined to go after these monsters and see if they were as fierce and invulnerable as claimed. At the present writing we who shoot the bow have slain more than a dozen bears with our shafts, but the mighty Kadiac brown grizzly has laughed at us from his frozen lair—as the literary nature fakir might say—we have been told that all that is necessary if you ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... to exult over the damage they had done to Thorarin. At this moment he assailed them with such fury that he slew Thorbiorn upon the spot, and killed several of his attendants, although Oddo, the son of Katla, escaped free from wounds, having been dressed by his mother in an invulnerable garment. After this action, more blood being shed than usual in an Icelandic engagement, Thorarin returned to Mahfahlida, and, being questioned by his mother concerning the events of the skirmish, he answered in the improvisatory ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... Cardinal that nobles were merely men; while the exile of the persecuted Marie de Medicis, and the privations to which she was exposed through his agency, taught them that even royalty itself was not invulnerable to the malice or vengeance of its opponents; and unhappily for those by whom Richelieu was succeeded in power, the lesson brought forth its fruits in ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... were they, as ever went forth armed and determined for premeditated crime; stout in frame, stout of heart, invulnerable by any physical apprehension, unassailable by any touch of conscience, pitiless, fearless, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... sign of the cross on the door made the inmates invulnerable, and when made with the finger on the breast it was a ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... purity and elevation of Emerson's character show themselves in all that he writes. His life corresponded to the ideal we form of him from his writings. This it was which made him invulnerable amidst all the fierce conflicts his gentle words excited. His white shield was so spotless that the least scrupulous combatants did not like to leave their defacing marks upon it. One would think he was protected by some superstition like that which Voltaire refers ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... soot-blackened faces. Evidently the lonely mountain dwellers had heard of the events of the evening before at Can Mallorqui and were surprised at seeing the senor of the tower alone, as if defying his enemies and believing himself invulnerable. ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Invulnerable, impenetrably armed: Such high advantages his innocence Gave him above his foe; not to have sinned, Not to have disobeyed. In fight he stood Unwearied, unobnoxious ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... art, taught by this great master Fergusano; and so far is this glorious hero bewitched with these sorcerers, that he puts his whole trust in these conjurations and charms; and so far they have imposed on him, that with an enchanted ointment, which they had prepared for him, he shall be invulnerable, though he should face the mouth of a cannon: they have, at the earnest request of Hermione, calculated his nativity, and find him born to be a king; and, that before twenty moons expire, he shall be crowned ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... divided as prize money among the crew. But think of it, man! I tell you it is an absolute impossibility for a shot to strike any ship which is provided with my apparatus. And then look at the cheapness. You don't want armour. You want nothing. Any ship that floats becomes invulnerable with one of these. The war ship of the future will cost anything from seven pound ten. You're grinning again; but if you give me a magnet and a Brixton trawler with a seven-pounder gun I'll show sport to ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... laws and constitutions, and even what they had considered as a law of Nature. But whatever they have put their seal on, for the purposes of their ambition, and the ruin of their neighbors, this alone is invulnerable, impassible, immortal. Assuming to be masters of everything human and divine, here, and here alone, it seems, they are limited, "cooped and cabined in," and this omnipotent legislature finds itself wholly without the power of exercising its favorite attribute, the love of peace. In other ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... estimate precisely the disqualifying effect, if any, of her nonconformity, her newness of blood, and other things, among the old county families established round her; but the toughest prejudices, he thought, were not likely to be long invulnerable to such cheerful beauty and brightness of intellect as Paula's. When she emerged, as she was plainly about to do, from the seclusion in which she had been living since her father's death, she would inevitably win her ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... in the manifestations of his own moral temper, and who was not by possibility liable to any impulse or 'shadow of turning' from another man's suggestion, it was not eventually an injury that he was dishonored by some of his connections; on him, invulnerable in his own character, neither a harlot for his wife, nor a gladiator for his son, could inflict a wound. Then as now, oh sacred lord Diocletian, he was reputed a god; not as others are reputed, but specially and in a peculiar sense, and with a privilege to such worship from all men as you yourself ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... whoever rules it, that I must always be. I, who am the chief of wizards; I, the reader of men's hearts; I, the hearer of men's thoughts! I, the lord of the air and the lightning; I, the invulnerable. If you would murder, Prince, then do the deed; do it knowing that I have your secret, and that henceforth you who rule shall be my servant. Nay, you forget that I can see in the dark; lay down that ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard |
