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Penetrate   Listen
verb
Penetrate  v. t.  (past & past part. penetrated; pres. part. penetrating)  
1.
To enter into; to make way into the interior of; to effect an entrance into; to pierce; as, light penetrates darkness.
2.
To affect profoundly through the senses or feelings; to touch with feeling; to make sensible; to move deeply; as, to penetrate one's heart with pity. "The translator of Homer should penetrate himself with a sense of the plainness and directness of Homer's style."
3.
To pierce into by the mind; to arrive at the inner contents or meaning of, as of a mysterious or difficult subject; to comprehend; to understand. "Things which here were too subtile for us to penetrate."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Penetrate" Quotes from Famous Books



... it would, in all human probability, cost the lives of the few remaining warriors of that unfortunate race. The people of Newfoundland can never blot out the memory of their past cruelties, and any party who strives to penetrate to their wilderness fastnesses, must ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... never penetrate the prayers and tears That futilely bring torture to dead and dying ears; There I should lie annihilate and my dead heart would bless Oblivion—the ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson

... mournfully, "your words rend my heart. Oh, do not be so gentle and generous! Be angry with me, call me an infamous villain, who, in his blindness, did not penetrate your magnanimity and heroic self-sacrifice; do not treat me with this charming mildness which crushes me! You acted like an angel toward me, and I treated you like a ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... of her inexplicable loss came over her, and she was frightened to madness; creeping chills alternating with cold sweats tortured her. It was a mystery she could not penetrate. She could not but implicate Lucy: but then Lucy might be in her grave. After every circumstance had passed in review, her suspicions inevitably returned and fastened upon her lawyer, Clamp. She almost wished he would come to see her again; for he, being naturally sulky at his first ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... great degree to the tri-calcium silicate (3CaO, SiO2) which is soluble by the sodium chloride found in sea-water, so that the resultant effect of the action of these two compounds is to enable the sea-water to gradually penetrate the mortar and rot the concrete. The concrete is softened, when there is an abnormal amount of sulphuric acid present, as a result of the reaction of the sulphuric acid of the salt dissolved by the water upon a part of ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams

... Caribbean Sea, including the Archipelago de San Andres y Providencia and Quita Sueno Bank; dispute with Venezuela over maritime boundary and Los Monjes Islands near the Gulf of Venezuela; Colombian-organized illegal narcotics, guerrilla, and paramilitary activities penetrate all of its neighbors' borders and have created a serious refugee crisis with over 300,000 persons having fled the country, mostly into ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... one in all this party of thirty trained, keen-minded people managed to penetrate the secret of how Captain Jack had been able to leave and return to the "Pollard" while that craft lay on the bottom ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham

... from one, Who it appears the Word doth rate so low; Who, undeluded by mere outward show, To Being's depths would penetrate alone. ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... within a few years, has remained unexplored. This has not been because no efforts have been made to break through the thick veil that has always hung over it. Travellers have been unceasing in their attempts to penetrate into the interior, and have failed, not from want of energy, but because of the insuperable difficulties in the way. If they have succeeded in reaching the shores, they died under the fatal coast fever. If they ...
— The Future of the Colored Race in America • William Aikman

... physiology—the difficulty of the subject begins beyond the stage of elementary knowledge, and increases with every stage of progress. While the most highly trained and the best furnished intellect may find all its resources insufficient, when it strives to reach the heights and penetrate into the depths of the problems of physiology, the elementary and fundamental truths can be made clear to ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... illusion for Englishmen to picture the Holy Child in a snowstorm, as it would be for the Londoners to picture him in a London fog. There can be snow in Jerusalem, and there might be snow in Bethlehem; and when we penetrate to the idea behind the image, we find it is not only possible but probable. In Palestine, at least in these mountainous parts of Palestine, men have the same general sentiment about the seasons as in ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... the box, the powers of the orator were not so cordially esteemed. To Matilda Pridden, his tales were barely decently the flesh and the devil smothering a holy occasion to penetrate and exhort. Dartrey sat rigid, as with the checked impatience for a leap. Nesta looked at Louise when some one was perceived on the stage bending to her father: It was Mr. Peridon; he never once ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Species' left in as much obscurity as ever—and we looked to Spencer as the one man living who could give us some clue to it. His wonderful exposition of the fundamental laws and conditions, actions and interactions of the material universe seemed to penetrate so deeply into that 'nature of things' after which the early philosophers searched in vain ... that we hoped he would throw some light on that great problem of problems.... He was very pleasant, spoke appreciatively of what we had both done for the ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... upsetting of all history, an Englishman on a bicycle trip brought him a newspaper, an article almost unknown to Keragouil, where the shriek of the locomotive had yet to penetrate. ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson

... his own consent. None has consented. It has been reported of me, as you know, that I obtained from the enemy of souls a range of existence beyond the period of mortality—a power to pass over space with the swiftness of thought—to encounter perils unharmed, to penetrate into dungeons, whose bolts were as flax and tow at my touch. It has been said that this power was accorded to me that I might be enabled to tempt wretches at their fearful hour of extremity with the promise of deliverance and immunity ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... smooth fibres which nothing can rot. These, when thoroughly purged of the foul black pollution in which they have sweltered so long, will go out to all quarters of the world under the name of "coir" to make indestructible door mats and other indispensable things. It will penetrate to every corner of India in which a white man lives, to mat his verandahs and stuff ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... them and plunging past them through the gloom toward the very middle of the world. Its width was a matter of memory, and its depth unguessable, for although dim moonlight filtered through it, he did not know where the moon was, nor how far such light could penetrate through moving water. Somewhere it met rock-bottom and boiled there, for a roar like the sea's ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... western side of the Sabine, like that of the Natchez, is a gentle slope, ending in a ridge which again sinks gradually and imperceptibly down to the swamp. The black masses of cypress and cedar allowed him to penetrate a few hundred paces through them, and to reach the summit of the rising ground; but as soon as the descent began, he found it impossible to get a step further. The slope was covered with a description of tree which he had never before seen or heard of. The stems were not thicker than a man's body, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... landed luckily and except for the shaking up and a few bruises he was little the worse for his tumble. Still sitting where he had plowed up the ballasting, he rubbed his arm tenderly and tried to penetrate the gloom, his eyes not yet accustomed to the starlight after the bright interior of the observation car. With his suitcase receding at the rate of thirty miles an hour this was going to be a fine pickle as a result of his haste! They were miles from Nowhere, he knew, but that did not ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse

... that this order of development is not quite consistent with an opinion which has been held, that it was a characteristic of early law not to penetrate beyond the external visible fact, the damnum corpore corpori datum. It has been thought that an inquiry into the internal condition of the defendant, his culpability or innocence, implies a refinement of juridical conception equally foreign to Rome before the ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... customers and display Madame's models were the last occupations Gabriella would have chosen had she been able to penetrate Madame's frivolous wig to her busy brain and detect her prudent schemes for the future; but the girl was sick of her dependence on George's father, and, in the revolt of her pride, she would have accepted any honest work which would have enabled her to escape from the insecurity of her position. ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... that state got ornery and cussid, and went Ablishn, and agin, like the wandrin Jew, I wuz forced to pull up, and wend my weary way to Kentucky, where, at Confedrit x Roads, I feel that I am safe. Massychoosets ideas can't penetrate us here. The aristocracy bleeve in freedom uv speech, but they desire to exercise a supervision over it, that they may not be led astray. They bleeve they'r rite, and for fear they'd be forced to change their minds, whenever they git into argument with anybody, ef the individooal gits the better ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby

... France through Switzerland," said the German, "and penetrate the heart of the empire. Lord Castlereagh approves of this plan and the Emperor Alexander gives ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina

... his ardour. On the contrary, he was in still more torturing, still closer bondage to this woman, in whom, even at the very moment when she surrendered herself utterly, there seemed always something still mysterious and unattainable, to which none could penetrate. What was hidden in that soul—God knows! It seemed as though she were in the power of mysterious forces, incomprehensible even to herself; they seemed to play on her at will; her intellect was not powerful enough ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... of Christ—with the historical and external; and it is the very grandeur of the Christian religion that, with all this profundity, it is easy of comprehension by our consciousness in its outward aspect, while, at the same time, it summons us to penetrate deeper. ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... of a deep canyon that seemed to penetrate to the heart of Sonoma Mountain. Again, with no word spoken, merely from watching Saxon, Billy stopped the wagon. The canyon was wildly beautiful. Tall redwoods lined its entire length. On its farther rim stood three rugged knolls covered with dense woods of spruce and ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... between 6,000,000 and 7,000,000 of the human race have been entombed. Most of the catacombs are situated from fifty to seventy-five feet below the surface of the earth, not a ray of natural light can penetrate the dense blackness of night which everywhere abounds. Woe to the man whose boldness leads him to venture alone into these dark depths! So extensive and so intricate are the corridors and passages that he must ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... The extreme limit of the working of gold appears, according to Plattner and Haussmann, at Goslar, to be reached when in 5,200,000 parts of mineral earth there is one of gold. Spite of this, however, by reason of their great ductility, the precious metals have been able to penetrate even into the meanest huts in one form or another. It has been estimated that a silver leaf may be attenuated by beating to a thickness of only 0.00001 of an inch, and a gold leaf to 0.0000035 of an inch. An ounce of ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... were in a winding creek whose sides were dense with trunks and branches forming an impenetrable barrier had there been the slightest inclination to land; but all thought of this passed away almost from the beginning. In fact, it was perfectly clear that the only way to penetrate the forest was to go up some waterway such as the one they were in, and this they followed slowly for a few hundred yards, the man with the boat-hook cleverly guiding the vessel in and out amongst the many obstacles, till the place grew darker and darker through the density ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn

... appearance, like that of a nutmeg: by this it plainly appears, that a precipitation also takes place in the action of tanning, although the hide is not dissolved, but merely swelled so as to enable the solution to penetrate it more easily. The property which animal jelly, or glue, possesses, of being precipitated by a solution of the tanning principle, furnishes a means of discovering what substances may be useful in tanning: nothing more is necessary than to make a solution or infusion of the vegetable substance supposed ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger

... "Penetrate further, my liege; this may be only a false confession to shield the queen's character. She who has once betrayed her duty, finds it easy ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... of silence which seems to be peopled with whispering spirits we strode forward along the elm avenue. It was very dark where the moon failed to penetrate. The house, low and rambling, came into view, its facade bathed in silver light. Two of the visible windows were illuminated. A sort of loggia ran ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer

... desires, filled with a calm disinterested love of God. In this state a man can distinguish truth from falsehood, pure gold from base metal, in matters of belief; he can see the connexion of the various dogmas, and their harmony with reason; and in reading Scripture he can penetrate beneath the literal to the spiritual meaning. But when Clement speaks of reason or knowledge, he does not mean merely intellectual training. "He who would enter the shrine must be pure," he says, "and purity is to think holy things." ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... savagely to work again and Ruth at short intervals discharged the revolver. The noise and the echoes in that compressed space were deafening and it certainly seemed as though the sound ought to penetrate ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes

... impressed I am. Just now I am on the last chapters in the gospel of John, and feel as if I had never read them before. They are just wonderful. We have to read the Bible to understand the Christian life, and we must penetrate far into that life in order to understand the Bible. How beautifully the one interprets the other! I want you to let me know, without telling her that I asked you, if Miss K. could make me a visit if it were not for ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... were slain. By the aid of their space-cars the victors colonized other planets in our solar system leaving the vanquished on earth to shift for themselves. There was nothing for them to do but to fight on and await the end, for no space-car that man had ever devised was able to penetrate the cold, far-reaches of space. Only among the family of our own sun could he navigate his ships. And now, like the earth, every member of that once glorious family was dead or dying. For millions of years, Mars, his ruddy glow gone forever, had rolled through space, the ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow

... something to the recognition on the part of the working farmers of Ireland that they were showing a capacity to grasp an idea which had so far failed to penetrate the bucolic intelligence of the predominant partner. Whatever the causes to which the success of the movement was attributable, those who were responsible for its promotion felt in the year 1895 that it had reached a stage in its development when ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett

... Continuation, resurrection, eternity are hereditary and habitual ideas; they have become almost inseparable and congenital parts of the mental system. This condition renders it nearly as difficult for us to understand the vagueness and mistiness of savage and unwritten creeds, as to penetrate into the modus agendi of animal instinct. And there is yet another obstacle in dealing with such people, their intense and childish sensitiveness and secretiveness. They are not, as some have foolishly supposed, ashamed of their tenets or their practices, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... trees lay before us. In five minutes we were landed safely on it, and the boat was secured to the stump of a fallen tree. It was too dark to allow us to attempt to penetrate into the interior, to ascertain the sort of place on which we had been thrown; so, returning to the boat and baling her out, we wrung our wet clothes and lay down to seek that rest we all, after our violent exertions and ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... surface of the leather, and removes from the surface pores of the leather, dirt, sweat, and other foreign matter, so that the oil can more readily penetrate the pores and saturate the fibers, thus making the leather ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... were exchanged for five steady dun-coloured ones, which were in their turn replaced after a seven-mile stage by four nice bays, who took us along at a tremendous pace. The sun began by this time to penetrate the mist, and the surrounding country became visible. We found that we were following the course of the river, passing through an avenue of coral-trees, loaded with the most brilliant flowers ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... current phrases and current compliments to all. Just possible it was that his personal attractions and ready utterance were beginning to strike a root or two in some one female bosom; but it was impossible for these roots to penetrate deeply, and take an exclusive hold. I believe Mr. Jessop quitted the neighbourhood of Marlow shortly after the publication of the Bibliomania, to return thither no more. ALFONSO was a Mr. Morell; a name well known in Oxfordshire. He was always in the same false position, from the beginning ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... wait patiently until you advance in Masonry, in the mean time exercising your intellect in studying them for yourself. To study and seek to interpret correctly the symbols of the Universe, is the work of the sage and philosopher. It is to decipher the writing of God, and penetrate ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... however, they discovered upon drawing nearer that the castle was surrounded by a forest so dense that not even the smallest member of the band could penetrate between the trunks and branches. Nor did there seem to be a road for them to take, the only thing resembling a road having been abandoned so long ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge

... you mean, son? Oh, I see. Of course, I don't believe that he is, but that's mere doubt, not negative certainty. However, if I'm wrong, if this man is truly He, we are worthy of him, we will penetrate his disguise." ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire

... still observed by the native to his European masters, the humble posture giving place to kneeling on a nearer approach. The kind proprietor of the Soekaboemi Hotel offers every facility to those guests anxious to penetrate below the surface of Soendanese life, placing his carriage and himself at the disposal of the visitor, and affording a mine of information otherwise unattainable, for books on Java are few and ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... established themselves in four or five of the negro quarters on the plantation, and in a certain sense they were strongly fortified. That is to say, they were housed in cabins built of logs too thick for any bullet to penetrate them. Four of these cabins were so placed that a fire from the door and the windows of either of them would completely command the entrance of each of the others. But to offset that, and to offset also the ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... precipices jutted so far out from each wall of the canyon that they overlapped, a thousand or fifteen hundred feet from the top. But downstream the upper part of the chasm flared to a width that permitted the noonday sun to penetrate part way down through ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... time went by until darkness was upon them. The fire was kept up, but Baxter screened it as much as possible, so that the glare might not penetrate to the forest beyond the gully and prove a beacon to guide Dick and John ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield

... Alroy. Desperate and determined, after listening to the spirits in the tomb, he resolved to penetrate the mysteries of Genthesma. He took from his girdle a flint and steel, with which he lighted a torch and then ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli

... crowded into pens whose wooden floors stank and steamed contagion; upon bare, blistering, cinder-strewn railroad tracks, and huge blocks of dingy meat factories, whose labyrinthine passages defied a breath of fresh air to penetrate them; and there were not merely rivers of hot blood, and car-loads of moist flesh, and rendering vats and soap caldrons, glue factories and fertilizer tanks, that smelt like the craters of hell—there were also tons of garbage festering in the sun, and the greasy ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... Apurimac and the Urubamba, sometimes called "the Cradle of the Incas." Although my photographs cannot compete with the imaginative pencil of such an artist, nevertheless, I hope that some of them may lead future travelers to penetrate still farther into the Land of the Incas and engage in the fascinating game of identifying elusive ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... bulloides, is represented. The living Globigerinoe from the tow-net are singularly different in appearance from the dead shells we find at the bottom. The shell is clear and transparent, and each of the pores which penetrate it is surrounded by a raised crest, the crest round adjacent pores coalescing into a roughly hexagonal network, so that the pores appear to lie at the bottom of a hexagonal pit. At each angle of this hexagon the crest gives off a delicate ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... least, are some of the gains of our civil war. We seek not to penetrate the councils of the Omniscient, or guess His purposes, though we may humbly hope there are vaster things than these in store for humanity and the world as the results of the struggle. Believing that He governs still, that He reigns on the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... shunned the peaks. If we could find a way clear to the top we might stay there in some security, till we learned the issue of the war, and could get word to our friends. "Moreover," he said, "we have yet to penetrate the secret of the hills. That was the object of our ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... a serene harmony of mood, and when the mind, stimulated into a joyful readiness by association with some quiet, just, and perceptive companion, visits its dusty warehouse, and turns over its fantastic stores. Then is the time to penetrate into the inmost labyrinths of a subject, to indulge in pleasing discursiveness, as the fancy leads one, and yet to return again and again with renewed relish to the central theme. Such talks as these, with no overshadowing anxiety upon ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... of human destinies am I! Fame, love and fortune on my footsteps wait, Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate Deserts and seas remote, and passing by Hovel and mart and palace—soon or late I knock unbidden once ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... the banking room, carefully closing the door behind him, so that the light from the rear room could not penetrate. "That's all right," he reassured the banker as the latter noticed the action; "this isn't ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... to Rushville, and while mad with liquor, made an attempt on my life by cutting my throat. Well for me that my knife was dull and did not penetrate to the jugular artery. The wound self-inflicted was an ugly but not dangerous one. I kept on drinking for a week or more, until I found that it was utterly out of my power to resist drinking so long as I remained in a place where I ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson

... their own until almost the time for frost. At my own decision I had a delicious little feeling of fear, which was at least justifiable when I thought of that huge drunken figure wrestling with Billy in the darkness and whom I knew to be the proprietor of the resort into which I had determined to penetrate. Also, from my early youth I had heard Jacob Ensley and the Last Chance spoken of in tones of dread disapproval. Before I should become really frightened I hurried down the hill, past the squalid and tumble-down mill cottages which I had ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... is powerless when we attempt to describe an event like this, for we cannot penetrate into the secret recesses of the heart, nor can we delineate the agonies of conscience which too often increase the anguish of such scenes, when the near approach of death unveils to men, truths they have been unwilling to learn or to believe. Many a cry for pardon and mercy ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly

... and then he found them as salt as the sea. The low, miserable, desert country in the neighbourhood, and Lake Torrens itself, act as a kind of barrier against the progress of inland discovery at the back of the colony of South Australia, since it is impossible to penetrate very far into the interior, without making a great circle either to the east or to the west. The portion of the bed of the lake which is exposed is thickly coated with particles of salt; there are few trees or shrubs of any kind to ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... of plaster. Roof and gates were covered with a sort of armor-plate, for there was a copper covering to the roof and the gates were faced with iron sheets and studs. In earlier "castles" there had been a thin covering of plaster which a musket ball could easily penetrate; and stone had been used only ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... beyond its effect on the brig. Had one been otherwise disposed, the attempt would have been useless, for the wind had filled the air with spray, and near the islets even with sand. The lurid but fiery tinge, too, interposed a veil that no human eye could penetrate. As the tornado passed onward, however, and the winds lulled, the air again became clear, and in five minutes after the moment when the Swash lay nearly on her side, with her lower yard-arm actually within a few feet of the ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... to penetrate the science of the age with a far more subtle science; to pass the bounds of space and time; venture into the dim spirit-realm, and attempt to establish a new religion in the world,—began its lessons in quarries and forges, in the smelting-pot and crucible, in ship-yards and dissecting-rooms. ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... her keenly, trying to penetrate beneath the surface of her almost unnatural calm. He did not ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow

... which no eye could penetrate surrounded him as he lay in bed. Absolute obscurity was essential to the repose of that singular brain, and he had perfected arrangements for supplying the deficiencies ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett

... fastened it. The rope gave way not by breaking or coming untied, and I cannot tell how. I told the herr the beliefs of my people, and that I had ceased to think that they were true; but we are seeking to penetrate the mysteries of the mines, and this accident has befallen us. I ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn

... forehead, scratched his head, and hitched uneasily in his chair, evidently making a vain effort to penetrate the gloom back of that vague awakening in the Southern hospital. At last he broke out in his usual irritation, ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... means, and have not a thought for the end. They confound being with individual being, and the expansion of the self with happiness—that is to say, they do not live by the soul; they ignore the unchangeable and the eternal; they live at the periphery of their being, because they are unable to penetrate to its axis. They are excited, ardent, positive, because they are superficial. Why so much effort, noise, struggle, and greed?—it is all a mere stunning and deafening of the self. When death comes they recognize that it is so—why not then admit it sooner? Activity is only beautiful when it ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... pathway lined with praying lanterns on either hand. These lanterns are stone pedestals, surmounted by a hollow stone ball with a crescent shaped aperture in its surface, through which, at night, the rays of light proceeding from burning prayers penetrate the gloom. Scores of tombs, containing the remains of the defunct tycoons and their wives, fill the temple court; and as each successive tycoon looked forward to reposing here after death, during life he richly embellished it, and endeavoured to make it worthy to ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... these marauders was left to the proconsul Metellus Celer. After some petty encounters, in which the insurgents were generally worsted, Sergius, having collected his force at the foot of the Alps, attempted to penetrate into the country of the Allobroges, expecting to find them ready to take up arms; but Metellus, learning his intention, pre-occupied the passes, and then surrounded and ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust

... "must fail in its main purpose because its very unwieldiness destroys or disperses the very things it was organized to study. It cannot penetrate the wilds; it cannot get into the dry lands. The very needs of the men and horses and dogs prevent that. It must keep to beaten tracks and in touch with the edge of civilization. The members of such an expedition are mere killers on a large scale, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... "In every age it has been seen how great is the strength of an idea to penetrate the masses, to stir nations, and to hurry them, if required, by thousands to the battle-field and to death. But if so great be the strength of a human idea, what power must not a heaven-descended idea possess, when God opens to it the gates of the ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... Those persons who desire to carry these acts of penance and mortification to a greater degree of perfection, adopt much severer practices and even more painful, such as putting hard peas into their shoes, wearing cilicios,—which are belts made of hogs' bristles, and having sharp iron goads which penetrate the flesh,—sleeping on the ground, and other ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous

... good Dutch burghers at Albany?" asked the chevalier. "I don't seek to penetrate any of your secrets. I merely ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler

... acted all the extravagance of an absolute madman. Fengo's guilt induced him to doubt the reality of a malady so favourable to his security; and suspicious of some direful project being hidden beneath assumed insanity, he tried by different stratagems to penetrate the truth. One of these was to draw him into a confidential interview with a young damsel, who had been the companion of his infancy; but Hamlet's sagacity, and the timely caution of his intimate friend, frustrated this design. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various

... rose to her feet and looked around, her interest centring on the rock and boulders, which stretched away to the rear further than they could penetrate with the eye. ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis

... am not seeking to penetrate what is to me, indeed, no secret; neither do I form the unavailing wish that our expired intercourse should revive. C'en est fait. A knot which has been loosened or untied may be formed again, but this knot has been cut. Accordingly, I neither address you by your name ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various

... evidence; And whoso desires to penetrate Deeper, must dive by the spirit-sense— No optics like yours, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... time three of the party hung back. With the Eskimo guide they numbered six. To penetrate still farther into an unknown wilderness at this season with an insufficient food supply would be foolhardy; it would be better for them to return to Nome by the shortest trail and ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan

... was too easy to last. Human affairs never run smoothly; it is a man's ability to surmount the hummocks and the pressure ridges that enables him to penetrate to the polar regions of success. The first inkling of disaster came to Mitchell when Miss Dunlap began to tire of the gay life and chose to spend her Monday evenings at home, where they might be alone together. She spoke ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... lifting of that dirty canvas screen, as sudden and perceptible a start on part of each of the confronted men and the quick entrance of the engineer. For another second or two no word was spoken. Loring's eyes were evidently unable at the instant to penetrate the gloom. Then he recognized Blake, then gradually the two men at the wall, and then at ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King

... phrased in clear, terse language. The old example in the schoolbook, that it is simpler and therefore better to say, "A leather apron" than, "An apron of leather," holds good with inserts, and especially leaders. Short, clean-cut sentences strike the eye and penetrate the mind the most quickly and effectively. If you doubt this, look at a good advertisement. So do not only dispense with every needless insert, but cut out from each ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds

... in London into which the sun seems never to penetrate. Some of these are in fashionable quarters, and it is to be supposed that their inhabitants find an address which looks well on note-paper a sufficient compensation for the gloom that goes with it. The majority, however, are in the mean neighborhoods of the great railway termini, and appear ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... "The further we penetrate into the country, the more dense we find the population to be, and civilization becomes at every step more strikingly apparent. Large towns, at a distance of only a few miles from each other, we were informed, lay on all sides of us, the inhabitants of which pay the greatest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... he who was different. She looked at him, trying to penetrate the secret of his difference. There was a restlessness about him, a fever ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... her lap and her hands on her work, while her eyes at one time gazed on the grass at her feet, at another searched Malcolm's face with a troubled look. The light of Malcolm's candle was beginning to penetrate into her dusky room, the power of his faith to tell upon the weakness of her unbelief. There is no strength in unbelief. Even the unbelief of what is false is no source of might. It is the truth shining from behind that gives the strength to disbelieve. ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise.... When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... leading to the object there is a portion of this sentence: 'Woe to the traitor who tries to penetrate the supreme secret of the state and to stretch forth a sacrilegious hand toward the treasure of the gods. His remains will be like offal, and his soul, torn by its sins, will wander ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... tin pudding-mold or an earthen bowl; close it tight so that water cannot penetrate; drop it into boiling water and boil steadily the required time. If a bowl is used it should be well buttered and not quite filled with the pudding, allowing room for it to swell; then a cloth wet in hot water, slightly wringing it, then floured on the inner ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... very mixed feelings. Much of the tour I had enjoyed. After the police difficulties of the beginning I had met with great hospitality and much kindness and it is always a pleasure to penetrate an unknown land, ride through great forests and see the new view open at the top of the pass. When the Belgrade police visaed my passport for the last time they bade me a friendly farewell. But I was severely disillusioned as to Great Serbia. Instead of brethren pining ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith

... eternal feminine aspect. Thus the Eastern woman, who is deeply aware in her heart of the sacredness of her mission, is a constant education to man. It has to be admitted that there are chances of such an influence failing to penetrate the callousness of the coarse-minded; but that is the destiny of all manifestations whose value is not in success or reward ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore

... hair, silken raiment, and tender hearts. They hunt, and a white boar starts out of the bushes; following him they arrive at a castle there, "where never had they seen trace of a building before." Pryderi ventures to penetrate into the precincts: "He entered and perceived neither man, nor beast; no boar, no dogs, no house, no place of habitation. On the ground towards the middle there was a fountain surrounded by marble, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... of the northern provinces sometimes bring these lions to Lima, and get money for showing them. They lead them by a string, or put them in large sacks, and carry them about on their backs, until a show-loving crowd assembles around them. The ounces are very bold and fierce. They penetrate into plantations, and attack children and horses. They very cunningly avoid the numerous snares laid for them by the Indians. An encounter with this animal is serious and dangerous. A hunt seldom ends without some of the pursuers being killed or wounded ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... cornfield. It is of exactly the same soil as the rest, but many passengers have trodden it hard, and the very foot of the sower, as he comes and goes in his work, has helped. Some of the seed, sown broadcast, of course falls there, and lies where it falls, having no power to penetrate the hard surface. As in our own English cornfields, a flock of bold, hungry birds watch the sower; and, as soon as his back is turned, they are down with a swift-winged swoop, and away goes the exposed grain. So there is an end of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... attained to a stage of complex perfection. To penetrate to the inside hut, the stranger reverently steps through a hole in the snow to the veranda, then by way of a vestibule with an inner and outer door he has invaded the privacy of the work-room, from which with fear and trembling he ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... and some one else won the competition, but, returning to college in February, he dauntlessly went after the prize again. Necessarily, Amory's acquaintance with him was in the way of three-minute chats, walking to and from lectures, so he failed to penetrate Burne's one absorbing interest and find ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... invitation from a lady prominent in literature and science to make her a visit. I accepted with gratification, as it would afford me the opportunity I coveted to become acquainted with the domestic life of Mizora, and perhaps penetrate its greatest mystery, for I must confess that the singular dearth of anything and everything resembling Man, never ceased to prey ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley

... man was shot down except Shaw, who stood alone on the bastion. "With inexpressible coolness he looked at his watch, said it was too late to carry the breaches," and then leaped down! The British could not penetrate the breach; but they would not retreat. They could only die where they stood. The buglers of the reserve were sent to the crest of the glacis to sound the retreat; the troops in the ditch would not believe the signal to be genuine, and struck their ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett

... partially punctured by the long poison fangs. Fortunately for him he had, at Dyer's suggestion, donned a pair of long sea boots of thick leather which had become hardened by frequent washings of salt water, and thus the fangs had failed to penetrate, to which fact he undoubtedly owed ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood

... acts of quiet and unostentatious goodness. He was an enthusiast in the duties of the Samaritan; and as his virtues were softened by the gentlest charity, so his hopes were based upon the devoutest belief. He never conversed upon his own origin and history, nor have I ever been able to penetrate the darkness in which they were concealed. He seemed to have seen much of the world, and to have been an eye-witness of the first French Revolution, a subject upon which he was equally eloquent and instructive. At the same time he did not regard ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... he took me with him to a literary reuenion, at which every bel-esprit of the capital was to be present. At first I refused to go, for I feared that the eyes of some of my own sex might penetrate my disguise; but he seemed so much hurt at my refusal that I was forced to withdraw it. The soiree was a very brilliant one. But little notice was taken of the shy, awkward, silent youth, who glided from room to room, hovering ever near the spot ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... distinguished. True, the audience consisted of three women—a semptress, a cook, and Simeon's sister—and a coachman; but this did not matter. The celebrities had begun in the same way. To be always at the height of his position, i.e., to penetrate into the depths of the psychological significance of crime and to discover the wounds of society, was one of ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... return," said I to Ernest. "I feel as if I had passed through the valley of the shadow of death. Is it not sacrilegious to penetrate so deeply into the ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... this frank penitent confesses her presence at a rendezvous of witches, Lammas, 1659, where, after they had rambled through the country in different shapes—of cats, hares, and the like—eating, drinking, and wasting the goods of their neighbours into whose houses they could penetrate, they at length came to the dounie Hills, where the mountain opened to receive them, and they entered a fair big room, as bright as day. At the entrance ramped and roared the large fairy bulls, which always alarmed Isobel Gowdie. These animals are probably the water-bulls, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... have shown that bombs falling from a great height are less effective than those falling from an airship nearer the earth. For a bomb, falling from a height of two miles, acquires enough momentum to penetrate far into the earth, so that much of the resultant explosive force is expended in a downward direction, and little damage is done to the fortifications. A bomb dropped from a lower altitude, expending its force on all sides, does ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton

... was for delay—Diane was better, and she would improve steadily. They could carry her, at first. But Harkness looked at the jungle he must penetrate and knew ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... of the sterner sex, you can also penetrate into the Capuchin Monastery, and enter the gardens, where the terraces that rise behind the buildings are almost Italian in appearance, festooned with vines and radiant with roses. Not that the fame of this institution rests on such trivial matters, however. The brothers boast of two things: ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various

... statistics from the register—a court 586 feet long by 246 feet wide—31/4 acres—relieved from barrenness by big circular plots in which flourished palms, bamboos and a medley of other tropical translations. Penetrate 10 feet into one of these plots, which are always damp from much watering, and it takes little imagining to fancy yourself in an equatorial jungle. Surrounding this quadrangle was another—the "outer quad," of 14 buildings ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... and fortunately had strength enough to reach the post and send back relief. Later McLean made several summer trips with a canoe up the George River from Ungava Bay and down the Grand River to Hamilton Inlet; but never again did he attempt to penetrate the country lying between Lake Michikamau and Hamilton Inlet to the north of Grand River. The fact was that he found his Grand River trips bad enough; the record he has left of them is a story of a continuous struggle against heartbreaking ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace

... edges, and when once it becomes attached to the wool of the sheep, it steadily works its way inward until it pierces the skin of the animal, and eventually causes its death. Cattle are not affected by this grass, as it does not penetrate their skins. They walk in it and feed upon it with impunity, and in any of the regions where this grass is found there is no attempt at rearing sheep, but the land is devoted ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox

... every housewife to remember in this connection is that the larger the roast the slower should be the fire. This is due to the fact that long before the heat could penetrate to the center, the outside would be burned. A small roast, however, will be more delicious if it is prepared with a very hot fire, for then the juices will not have a chance to evaporate and the tissues will be ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 3 - Volume 3: Soup; Meat; Poultry and Game; Fish and Shell Fish • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... difficulty in owning that even miracles, at least things that appear such, the prediction of future events, movements of the body which appear beyond the usual powers of nature, to speak and understand foreign languages unknown before, to penetrate the thoughts, discover concealed things, to be raised up, and transported in a moment from one place to another, to announce truths, lead a good life externally, preach Jesus Christ, decry magic and ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... loth to believe in such treachery, and was desirous of obtaining clearer information, before he took any step that might interrupt the apparently good understanding that existed with the natives. Mendez now undertook, with a single companion, to penetrate by land to the headquarters of Quibian, and endeavor to ascertain his intentions. Accompanied by one Rodrigo de Escobar, he proceeded on foot along the seaboard, to avoid the tangled forests, and ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... THE SUBSOIL ARE MINGLED. The mingling of humus and the subsoil is brought about by several means. The roots of plants penetrate the waste, and when they die leave their decaying substance to fertilize it. Leaves and stems falling on the surface are turned under by several agents. Earthworms and other animals whose home is in the waste ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... drank the clear, cold water of a forest brook, water that had the fragrance of the grasses and the flowers it has bathed. Even wider and wider grew the pictures as they unfolded upon him; here is a path through the thick, slumbering forest; the fine sunbeams penetrate through the branches of the trees, and quiver in the air and under the feet of the wanderer. There is a savoury odour of fungi and decaying foliage; the honeyed fragrance of the flowers, the intense odour of ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... a rock under the giant sycamore and leaned confidingly against the shaggy trunk. The glaring sunshine that fell upon the fields and hills could not wholly penetrate the protecting canopy of well-proportioned sycamore leaves; only a few quivering rays fell upon the girl's ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers

... made a movement. The duke frowned, and the unlucky jailer felt the point of the dagger penetrate his clothes, and press ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... in London. The recently discovered Lake Ngami, in Southern Africa, and the interesting region to the north, towards the equator—the reflection how successfully she had travelled among savage tribes, where armed men hesitated to penetrate, how well she had borne alike the cold of Iceland and the heat of Babylonia—and lastly, the suggestion that she might be destined to raise the veil from some of the totally unknown portions of the interior of Africa—made her determine ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... maintained a determined silence, which no endeavours of friends or judges could induce them to break. Colonel de Bellechasse and various other officers visited Oakley in his prison, and did their utmost to penetrate the mystery. Their high opinion both of him and De Berg, convinced them there was something very extraordinary and unusual at the bottom of the business, and that its disclosure would tell favourably for the prisoners. But nothing could be got out ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... the sole spectator of the fun. He let out that the idea had suggested itself to him after the sight of a Diorama to which they had been taken, but he would not allow that it was anything of the same kind; in proof of which she was at liberty to keep back her paint-box. Dot tried hard to penetrate the secret, and to reserve some of her things from the general conscription. But Sam was obstinate. He would tell nothing, and he wanted everything. The dolls, the bricks (especially the bricks), the tea-things, the German farm, the Swiss ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing



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