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Resistless

adjective
1.
Impossible to resist; overpowering.  Synonym: irresistible.  "What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?"
2.
Offering no resistance.  Synonyms: supine, unresisting.  "No other colony showed such supine, selfish helplessness in allowing her own border citizens to be mercilessly harried"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Resistless" Quotes from Famous Books



... prince refuse the alarm, Fain would he check the fury of his arm; But when thy cruelties his thoughts engage, The hero kindles with becoming rage, Then countries stolen, and captives unrestored, Give strength to every blow, and edge his sword. 140 Behold with what resistless force he falls On towns besieged, and thunders at thy walls! Ask Villeroy, for Villeroy beheld The town surrendered, and the treaty seal'd, With what amazing strength the forts were won, Whilst the whole power of ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... and calmer, and entirely free from fever. Without attempting to explain this unhoped-for resurrection, he had gone away, saying, "Let us wait and see"; he relied upon the power of youth to throw off disease, upon the resistless force of the life-giving sap, which often engrafts a new life upon the very symptoms of death. If he had looked under Desiree's pillow, he would have found there a letter postmarked Cairo, wherein lay the secret ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... to land. The waves most dreaded came rolling on in threes, with their crests, driven into spray, streaming behind them. A short lull followed each triple charge. Had one of these seas struck our boat, nothing could have saved us; for they came on with resistless force; seaward, in shore, and on either side of us, they broke in foam, but we escaped. For six weary hours we faced those terrible trios. A low, dark, detached, oddly shaped cloud came slowly from the mountains, and hung for hours directly over our heads. A flock of night-jars (Cometornis ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... And virtue guard thee to the throne of truth! Yet should thy soul indulge the gen'rous heat Till captive science yields her last retreat; Should reason guide thee with her brightest ray, And pour on misty doubt resistless day; Should no false kindness lure to loose delight, Nor praise relax, nor difficulty fright; Should tempting novelty thy cell refrain, And sloth effuse her opiate fumes in vain; Should beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart, Nor claim the triumph of a lettered ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... recent that all thoughts of gayety were out of the question. This fact lessened the chances which the gallant French cavaliers might otherwise have had, but in no respect lessened their devotion. Beauty in distress is always a touching and a resistless object to every chivalrous heart; and here the beauty was exquisite, and ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille

... for I was suffering keenly. I felt as if this fair, clever woman had struck a deliberate blow at my happiness, and in a way to leave me resistless. I could not deny that it might be for Tabitha's good to go away. Certainly John was poor, and in fact I had thought lately that that might be the reason the engagement was delayed. Tabitha was only twenty-two, and she might change ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall

... the devil, in the guise of a woman lost to all virtue save a desire to aggrandize her husband and herself. These have a pretence of history; but Hamlet, with hardly that pretence, stands alone supreme in varied excellence. Ambition, murder, resistless fate, filial love, the love of woman, revenge, the power of conscience, paternal solicitude, infinite jest: what ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... that modern science adds to her might. The old galley, which three thousand years ago, propelled by a hundred strong oarsmen, swept the waters of the Great Sea, was a poor thing indeed compared with a modern war-ship, in whose bosom beats a power as resistless as the elements. But its efficiency, such as it was, was not likely to be impaired. It had no furnace to feed, no machinery to watch, only the rude wants of rude men to supply, and rough oars to replace. A sailing ship, dependent upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... market a shipment of cotton; that a norther overtook them on a treeless prairie, and a few minutes afterward they were surprised by beholding a line of rushing fire, surging, roaring and advancing like the resistless billows of an ocean swept by a gale; that there was no time for escape, and they perished terribly in fighting the ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes

... enemy; the feet of every man pursuing him; the hands of every man slaying him. The insolence of the Frenchman has contrived to convey a sting of the bitterness of conquest into every heart of our millions, and our millions will return it with resistless retribution." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... Kings who in Islay kept state, Proud chiefs of Clan Ranald, Glengarry, and Sleat! Combine like three streams from one mountain of snow, And resistless in union ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... The People; the thunder of the outbreak of revolt; the mob demanding to be led, aroused at last, imperious, resistless, overwhelming. It was the blind fury of insurrection, the brute, many-tongued, red-eyed, bellowing for guidance, baring its teeth, unsheathing its claws, imposing its will with the abrupt, resistless pressure of the relaxed ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... dost not mean it. Am I not thy wife? and wouldst thou kill me? Thou wilt not; and yet—I see—thou art Wieland no longer! A fury resistless and horrible possesses ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... Here, where in the morning a mighty ship had floated, nothing could now float; but the noise that broke upon their ears told them of the return of the waters that now were about to pour onward with resistless might into the empty channel, and send successive waves far along into ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille

... has disclosed the inward disease, the fearful hollowness, the spiritual death, of the nation's philosophical and theological forms, with resistless eloquence; and like the Jews of old, they will exclaim, "That man is a ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... Sunday to whittle sticks, swap jack-knives and horses, and to listen to the white-haired parson who led them by the resistless rhetoric of a blameless life, as well as by his heartfelt prayers and exhortations in those "ways which are ways of pleasantness and those paths which ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... regretted the past, and the decision he had taken to leave his wife and his family. All the sweet emotions of peace, of home, of paternal bliss, of married life, overcame him in this hour of farewell with, resistless power, and in Josephine's arms he wept bitter tears of repentance, ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... families of a hundred white farmers in comfort and prosperity; but they knew that to the westward there was a region, vast and rich beyond anything words could say, and they longed to possess it, with a hunger that was sometimes a pitiless greed, and always a resistless desire. Yet it was not until the French gave up this region that they could even venture lawlessly into it, and it was not until it fell from Great Britain to the new power of the United States that the borderers began openly to press into the ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... by sea or by land, throughout the world. In her the world saw realized the fabled giant of antiquity. With her hundred hands she grasped her foes in every region under heaven, and crushed them with resistless energy. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... between this man and me, Shon McGann, and you shall see a great matter. Perhaps there will be blood, perhaps not— perhaps only an end." And the half-breed looked up at the Irishman from under his dark brows so covertly and meaningly that Shon saw visions of a trouble as silent as a plague, as resistless as a great flood. This noiseless vengeance was not after his own heart. He almost shivered as the delicate ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... king stood still Till the last echo died: then throwing off The sackcloth from his brow, and laying back The pall from the still features of his child, He bowed his head upon him and broke forth In the resistless eloquence of woe:— ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various

... on me to preach." It may be laid on a people to fight. Nor, when the sword has been drawn in a good cause, has God refused His sanction to that last, terrible resort. It was He who imparted strength to the arm before whose resistless sweep the Philistines fell in swathes, like grass to the mower's scythe. It was He who guided the stone that, shot from David's sling, buried itself in the giant's brow. It was He who gave its earthquake-power to the blast of the ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie

... then he exhibited to all who might observe and admire his irresistible genius as a ruler of men. With his knees, with his elbows, with his shoulders, with his resistless feet he shoved, crushed, slammed, heaved, kicked, flung, pounded the overplus of passengers aboard. Then with the sounds of its wheels drowned by the moans, shrieks, prayers, and curses of its unfortunate ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... colossal advertisements across the Hudson, at the freight trains below; I gazed upon the lordly Hudson itself, that majestic sewer which drains the Empire State, bearing within its resistless flood millions of tons of insoluble matter from that magic fairyland which we call "up-state," to the sea. And, thinking of disposal plants, I thought of that sublime paraphrase—"From the Mohawk to the Hudson, and from ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers

... tangible shrine. Still, however imperfect and inadequate the method, and however unsatisfactory the results, humanity has never lost its positive and ineradicable confidence that the problem of existence could be solved. The resistless tide of spontaneous and necessary thought has always borne the race onward towards the recognition of a great First Cause; and though philosophy may have erred, again and again, in tracing the logical order of this inevitable thought, and exhibiting the necessary ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... Lee had entrusted his counter-move, was sweeping away the Federal forces in the Shenandoah Valley with resistless fury, and suddenly, to the intense surprise and mortification of the whole North, advanced upon Washington, threatening it with capture. Washington was almost as completely unprepared for resistance as Petersburg had ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill

... mastery over the language is unrivalled; it is with him a keen, resistless weapon; his power of words is endless. All nature, human and external, is ransacked to serve and run his errands. The bright cutlery, after all the dross of Birmingham has been thrown aside, is his style.... He has "broken the ice, and ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... that Gracchus, in the face of such formidable competition, would have stood his ground in Rome and would have exhausted every effort of his resistless oratory in exhibiting the dishonesty of his opponents and in seeking to reclaim the allegiance of the people. But perhaps he held that the effective accomplishment of another great design would be a better object-lesson of his power as a benefactor and ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... character no less than the others. No corner of the earth is ignorant of the representatives of that sturdy race whose commerce is worldwide; whose inventions have revolutionized ways and means of getting and doing and having things; whose enterprise is boundless; whose self-contained courage is resistless in onset as it is strong in resistance; whose busy going to and fro, or whose steady home-work, always has an eye to the main chance; whose stateliness as shown in the conservative wealth of the Old England is matched by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... his knees, under the folds of his long robe, and, while he feeds her with bread and sweetmeats, keeps up a running comment of remarks and laughter at all around her, and the unspeakable solemnity of old Father Abraham's face is lit up, now and then, with the flicker of a resistless smile. ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... hour there was a continuous roar of rushing water. Burt, restless and almost reckless, went out to watch the floods. He soon returned to say that every bridge on the place had gone, and that what had been dry and stony channels twenty-four hours before were now filled with resistless torrents. ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... chuse, Arm'd with Hell flames and fury, all at once O'er Heavens high tow'rs to force resistless way, Turning our tortures into horrid arms Against the Torturer; when to meet the Noise Of his almighty Engine he shall hear Infernal Thunder, and for Lightning see Black fire and horror shot with equal rage Among his Angels; and his throne it self Mixt with Tartarean Sulphur, and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... thunderbolt of war, Prince Edward, who charged full upon the Londoners. The poor light-armed cits were ill prepared for the shock of so heavy a brigade of cavalry; and they broke and yielded like a dam before a resistless flood. No mercy was shown them. Many were driven into the Ouse on the right, and so miserably drowned; others fled in a body before the prince, who pursued them for four miles, hacking, hewing, quartering, slaughtering. Just like the Rupert of the later Civil Wars, he sacrificed ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... of living light Flows with resistless force, Dispelling clouds of mental night That meet its onward course, When all the soul is centred in The great and primal thought That services which hearts would win, With price can ne'er be bought. Such service heaven alone repays E'en though on earth 'tis ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite

... increased in fury, especially on the right. Very soon reports began to float back that the Federals were heavily overlapping A. P. Hill's right, and things looked dangerous. Then it was rumored that some of Hill's right regiments were beginning to give way, under the resistless weight of the columns hurled upon him and round his flank. We could quickly perceive this to be true by the sound of the firing, which came nearer to us and passed toward the left. This immediately ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame

... several feet deep on the level and piled ten times higher among the mountains, Deerfoot and the boys hunted with their friends on snow-shoes. It was exhilarating, but the resistless cold took away much of the pleasure that otherwise would have come to the lads. As for the Shawanoe, summer and winter seemed alike ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... thoughts, sustained his ways; His reverence lit its trembling rays. Resistless came great Heaven's decree; The sons of Shang must bend the knee;— The sons of Shang, each one a king, In numbers beyond numbering. Yet as God spoke, so must it be:— The sons of ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... Speaks in great works instead of empty words; Bends stubborn matter to his iron will, Drains the foul marsh, and rends in twain the hill— A hanging bridge across the torrent flings, And gives the car of fire resistless wings. Light kindles up the forest to its heart, And happy thousands throng the new-born mart; Fleet ships of steam, deriding tide and blast, On the blue bounding waters hurry past; Adventure, eager for the task, explores Primeval wilds, and lone, sequestered ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... the wind became even more violent, and now the flames were distinctly to be seen, and the whole air was filled with myriads of sparks. The fire bore down upon them with resistless fury, and soon the atmosphere was so oppressive, that they could scarcely breathe; the cattle galloped down to the lake, their tails in the air, and lowing with fear. There they remained, knee-deep in ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... is of opinion, that he sails home with the key of the riddle of their power to vanquish. In some apparent allusion to an Indian story of a married couple who successfully made their way, he accounts for their solid and resistless advance, resembling ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... a great drive of rain, filling the world," said Io in her voice of dreams. "The roar of waters above us and below, and the glorious sense of being in the grip of a resistless current.... We're all in the grip of resistless currents. D'you believe that ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... was too late. As he spoke, the horse and buggy plunged into the flood, and for a moment they were lost to view. Then the struggling animal seemed to strike rising ground; but the buggy was caught in the resistless current, and, with George Denham clinging to it, it dragged the horse down, and the swirling waters seemed to sweep over and beyond them. Blue Dave lost not a moment. Flinging himself into the flood from the vantage-ground on which he stood, a few strokes of his sinewy arms ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris

... pain-filled wail of Nils, coming as it did, seemed magic-inspired to light for me a universal truth. I felt it crudely, saw it dimly, but there it was, dramatized before my eyes, the age-long, ceaseless battle between the Beast in Man and the God in Man, the resistless power of service and sacrifice. Aye, and Holy Joe's softly spoken reply to the mate's words confirmed what I saw ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

... and find thirteen fathoms of water to hold on in till the tide should turn. When at last it did turn, and got under way, it fairly took us in its teeth, and we shot through, an impotent plaything on the heaving bosom of the resistless waters. We returned safely, with a site selected and a fair chart of ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... heaven illustrate our constellation of States. When God launched the planets upon their celestial pathway, he bound them all by the resistless power of attraction to the central sun, around which they revolved in their appointed orbits. Each may be swept by storms, may be riven by lightnings, may be rocked by earthquakes, may be devastated by all the terrestrial forces and overwhelmed in ruin, but far away ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... where angels fear to tread. Distrustful sense with modest caution speaks, It still looks home, and short excursions makes; But rattling nonsense in full volleys breaks, And never shocked, and never turned aside, Bursts out, resistless, with ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... drama, nothing in fact can equal the power of the picture, but its inexpressible sweetness and its perfect grace: the passion which has taken possession of Juliet's whole soul, has the force, the rapidity, the resistless violence of the torrent: but she is herself as "moving delicate," as fair, as soft, as flexible as the willow that bends over it, whose light leaves tremble even with the motion of the current which hurries ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... to the spot, where they witnessed the devouring ravages of the yet unquenched element, consuming with resistless force all that came in ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... modifications, from the thirst of glory to the dread of shame, is the passion of which the empire is by far the most general, and perhaps the authority the most commanding. Though its power be most conspicuous and least controulable in the higher classes of society, it seems, like some resistless conqueror, to spare neither age, nor sex, nor condition; and taking ten thousand shapes, insinuating itself under the most specious pretexts, and sheltering itself when necessary under the most artful disguises, it winds its way in secret, when it dares not openly avow ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... hundred miles an hour. There have been instances where tornadoes have shaved off the stone sides of buildings as if they had been sliced away by a stonecutter. Forecaster Scarr, of New York, said that the tornado that wrought destruction in Nebraska may have been of the resistless kind that simply ground stone and brick to dust and carried up its electrified funnel the remnants of every building it struck. The tornado finally became almost like a mass of whirling steel, revolving faster than the blades of the ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall

... or overruling principle which cannot be resisted; he that admits it is prepared to comply with every desire that caprice or opportunity shall excite, and to flatter himself that he submits only to the lawful dominion of nature, in obeying the resistless authority of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... subtlest instinct of self-preservation against something fatal; against being led on beyond—yes, it was like that curious, instinctive sinking which some feel at the mere sight of a precipice, a dread of going near, lest they should be drawn on and over by resistless attraction. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... his face to a new land and resolved again to conquer fortune or die. He conquered—of course he conquered—and is now worth many millions. But if you look into his kindly but deadly blue eye, and consider the tragic and premature whiteness of his hair, and take in the whole resistless and compelling personality of the man, you will see why ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... was now beginning to flow with resistless flood. The hostility between the court and the people was hourly increasing. Famine added its horrors to the general tumult and agitation. A winter of unparalleled severity—the winter of 1789—terribly increased the general suffering. The Duke of Orleans was profuse ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... drew back in utter amazement. He had already stepped from the half-severed beam, when he saw it bend, break, and roll, with Alfred, who had advanced to the middle of the bridge, into the torrent beneath, which swept both beam and man away with resistless force. ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... according to the evolution theory, has its root in the emotions. Hence, it is no more an argument to say that the irrepressible character of conscience refers us to a God of morality, than it would be to say that the sometimes resistless force of the ludicrous refers us to a god of laughter. Love, again, is an emotion which cannot be subdued by volition, and in its tendency to persist bears just such a striking resemblance to the feelings of morality as we should expect to find on the supposition ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes

... mind! Who for all ages writ, and all mankind, Has been to careless printers oft a prey, Nor time, nor moth e'er spoil'd as much as they; Let the right reading drive the cloud away, And sense breaks on us with resistless day." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various

... for the terrified animals, with a deafening roar that expressed abject fear, started forward on a gallop, with a front as resistless as ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor

... firelocks,) he led the attack in gallant style, and completely succeeded in surprising the enemy, who evinced a highly creditable state of order and discipline in repeatedly forming, though compelled as often to disperse before the resistless energy of the British bayonet. Two brigadiers, (Chandler and Winder,) 7 other officers and 116 men, with three guns and one brass howitzer, were taken in this intrepid attack, which, as it reduced the Americans ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... shall not so resistless be, that Regin shall my death-word bear; for the brothers both shall speedily go hence ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson

... am still past reason in all that touches this ignorant, hot-headed, Pharisaical, rather stupid wench! That is droll. But love is a resistless tyrant, and, Mother of God! has there been in my life a day, an hour, a moment when I have not loved her! To see her once was all that I had craved,—as a lost soul might covet, ere the Pit take him, one splendid glimpse of Heaven and the Nine Blessed Orders at their fiddling. And ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... the popular spirit, thus set at naught in present account and in calculation for the future, was discouraged from active outward manifestation, by the invetorate, perfectly organized, and, for the present, resistless domination. But under the pressure of wide-spread and unabating grievance, which quickened and envenomed every sentiment previously entertained regarding the rights and wrongs of the people, it was gradually acquiring, throughout the country, a more determinate sense of being absolved ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... in grave council sits the sage: Then burns the youth's resistless rage To hurl the quiv'ring lance; The Muse with glory crowns their arms, And Melody exerts her charms, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... changing aspects? Who has not called a child from an interesting tale in a book he was reading, and found that it required the combined force of our authority and the child's will to break the spell of his interest and separate him from his book? Interest is always ready to flow in resistless current if we can but find the right channel and a way to set it free. When we find our class uninterested, therefore, we must first of all seek the explanation not in the children, but in ourselves, our methods, or ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts

... another moment beheld him closed in deadly conflict with his mysterious foe. A deep and terrible oath, and then a mocking laugh, escaped his adversary; and something in those sounds, nerved Stanley's arms with resistless power: he was sure he could not be mistaken, and he fought, not with the unguarded desire of one eager to obtain satisfaction for personal injury—but he was calm, cool, collected, as threefold an avenger. For once, the demon-like ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... hoped for peace in the beauty and tenderness of Ned's chivalrous devotion. Yet his one letter reporting the meeting had revealed her mistake. The moment she had read his confession the impulse to scream her protest to John was all but resistless. She had tried in vain to find a way of writing to Ned to tell him that she had deceived him and herself, ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... firmly, "Sire de Graville, a stern thing is duty, and resistless is its voice. These Welchmen, unless curbed to their mountains, eat into the strength of England, as the tide gnaws into a shore. Merciless were they in their ravages on our borders, and ghastly and torturing their ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... fatigue had seemed almost unknown before. But it was very natural that exhaustion should follow a day of such excessive labor, and she would soon be refreshed. So thought those who loved her, unconscious of the threatening danger. The heavy chill retained its grasp, the resistless torpor of paralysis crept slowly on, and then complete insensibility. In this utter helplessness, which baffled every effort of human skill, night wore away, and morning dawned. There was no change and days passed before the ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... now risen mountains high, and more than once had struck the ship abaft. Kloots was at the binnacle, Hillebrant and Philip at the helm, when a wave curled high over the quarter, and poured itself in resistless force upon the deck. The captain and his two mates were swept away, and dashed almost senseless against the bulwarks—the binnacle and compass were broken into fragments—no one ran to the helm—the vessel broached to—the seas ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... Demetrius, Ivan's youngest son, By Andrei, an honest Diak, saved By stealth in that red night of massacre. Proofs of the fact lay carefully preserved Within two convents, which were pointed out. On this the Boiars at my feet fell down, Won by the force of these resistless proofs, And hailed me as the offspring of their Czar. So from the yawning gulfs of black despair Fate raised me up to fortune's topmost heights. And now the mists cleared off, and all at once Memories on memories started into life In the ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller

... seemed petrified. Then burst forth a hoarse uproar and the stamp of many boots. All in another instant pandemonium broke out. The huge crowd split in every direction. Joan felt Cleve's strong arm around her—felt herself borne on a resistless tide of yelling, stamping, wrestling men. She had a glimpse of Kells's dark face drawing away from her; another of Gulden's giant form in Herculean action, tossing men aside like ninepins; another of weapons aloft. Savage, wild-eyed men fought to get into the ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... sands of the desert Are born by the simoon's wrath, And in wanton and fleet confusion, Are strewn on its trackless path; So our lives with resistless fury, Insensibly and unknown, With a restless vacillation By the winds of fate are blown; But an All-Wise Hand May have changed the sand, For ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... persons in Bursley to defy fashion in the matter of pockets. His suit was of a strange hot colour—like a brick which, having become very dirty, has been imperfectly cleaned and then powdered with sand—made in a hard, eternal, resistless cloth, after a pattern which has not survived the apprenticeship of Five Towns' tailors in London. Scarcely anywhere save on the person of James Ollerenshaw would you see nowadays that cloth, that tint, those very short coat-tails, that curved ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett

... rock to rock— Spake, with accents mild and clear, Words of warning, words of cheer, But tedious to the bridegroom's ear. He knew the chart Of the sailor's heart, All its pleasures and its griefs, All its shallows and rocky reefs, All those secret currents, that flow With such resistless undertow, And lift and drift, with terrible force, The will from its moorings and its course. Therefore he spake, and thus said he:— "Like unto ships far off at sea, Outward or homeward bound, are we. Before, behind, and all around, Floats and swings the horizon's bound, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... the former condition of the moon may have been, its existing appearance gives it a resistless fascination, and it bears so clearly the story of a vast catastrophe sculptured on its rocky face that the thoughtful observer cannot look upon it without a feeling of awe. The gigantic character of the lunar features impresses the beholder not less than the universality ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... are known only by tradition. Of the eloquence of Otis, which was described as "flames of fire," there are but a few meagre reports; the passionate appeals of Patrick Henry and of the elder Adams, which "moved the hearers from their seats," and the resistless declamation of Pinkney and Rutledge, are preserved only in the history of the effects which these ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... Damase was ready to strike. One glance at the state of affairs was enough. Damase's back was turned toward him. With a swift spring, that startled the others as if he had fallen through the roof, he darted forward, and ere the French-Canadian's fist could reach its mark a resistless grasp was laid upon his collar, and, swung clear off his feet, he was flung staggering across the room as though he had been ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley

... the South—the same perseverance and intelligence on the part of those who are earning their bread by the cultivation of the soil, will be crowned with the same success. Violence, bloodshed, and murder cannot rule long in communities where these resistless elements are allowed to work. No scene in the unparalleled tragedy of the rebellion, or in the drama which succeeded that tragedy, can be compared to the picture outlined by Mrs. Harper herself, and ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... an impetuous, a demonstrative, a fiery nature. The Senorita was a Spaniard. As Buttons told all this in passionate words, to which his ardent love gave resistless eloquence, her whole manner showed that her heart responded. An uncontrollable excitement filled her being; her large, lustrous eyes, bright with the glow of the South, now beamed more luminously through her tears, and—in short: Buttons felt encouraged—and ventured ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... your enemy, I could not do better than to repeat the arguments that have just fallen from the lips of the head of our councils, set off with every trick of eloquence that would send them with a yet more resistless power into the minds not only of those who are assembled here, but of those, your subjects, wherever over these large dominions they are scattered. To press this war is to undermine the foundations of the fairest kingdom the sun shines upon, and unseat the most beloved ruler ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... need reviews. Besides, a large number of the critics—the "log-rollers" especially—are mad against her for her success, and the public know it. Clearness of thought, brilliancy of style, beauty of diction—all these are hers, united to consummate ease of expression and artistic skill. The potent, resistless, unpurchasable quality of Genius. She wrote what she had to say with a gracious charm, freedom, and innate consciousness of strength. She won fame without the aid of money, and was crowned so brightly and visibly before the world ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray

... in vain: the all-composing hour Resistless falls! the muse obeys the power. She comes! she comes! the sable throne behold Of night primaeval and of chaos old. Before her, fancy's gilded clouds decay, And all its varying rainbows die away. Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires, ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... eat or drink the wretched man Prepared, by that resistless need pursued, Forthwith — infernal and avenging clan — Appeared the monstrous Harpies' craving brood; Which, armed with beak and talons, overran Vessel and board, and preyed upon the food; And what their wombs suffice not to receive ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... said; the waxlights glittered like swords on the polished floor. Twinkling on jewelled snuffboxes, beaming savagely from the crass gold of candelabra, From the white shoulders of girls and the white powdered wigs of men... All life was that dance. The mocking, resistless current, The beauty, the passion, the perilous madness — As she took my hand, released it and spread her dresses like petals, Turning, swaying in beauty, A lily, bowed by the rain, — Moonlight she was, and her body of moonlight and foam, And her eyes stars. Oh the dance has a pattern! ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet

... George Cartier, it is doubtful whether the Dominion of Canada would exist to-day. He it was who faced at its inception the not unnatural French-Canadian distrust of the measure. It was his magnificent courage and resistless energy which triumphed over all opposition. Confederation was not the work of any one person. Macdonald, Brown, Tupper—each played his indispensable part; but assuredly not the least important share in the accomplishment of that ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope

... the ears of an ungrateful people. He had spoken of the coming Christ and His all-peaceful mission in mystic imagery, and had given miraculous evidences of his predictions. But suffering should be the precursor of that marvellous advent. The Assyrian dashed in resistless torrent upon the fold. Israel was led captive. Hosea was in chains. Samaria and the kingdom of Israel were added to the conquests of Sennacherib; and the kingdom of Judah, harassed but not destroyed, waited the accomplishment of prophecy, and the measure ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... city, or close siege doth lay Against some mountain-stronghold; even so Sly Dares shifts, an opening to essay, And vainly varies his assault each way. On tiptoe stretched, Entellus, pricked with pride, Puts forth his right hand, with resistless sway Steep from his shoulder. But the foe, quick-ey'd, Foresees the coming blow, and lightly ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... times described as like the wail of a child or of a traveller lost in the woods—aroused more terror than the nearest bark of the wolf; its stealth and cunning more than the strength and courage and address of the bear; its attack more than the rush of the majestic, resistless bison, or the furious pass with antlers lowered of the noble, ambereyed, infuriated elk. Hidden as still as an adder in long grass of its own hue, or squat on a log, or amid the foliage of a sloping tree, it waited around the salt licks and the springs and along the woodland pathways for the ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen

... in front of it. Being fully determined to do his duty to the utmost, the brave fellow sat in his saddle, swinging his arms about his head, and no doubt shouting at the top of his voice to stop the advance of the frightened herd, which was bearing down upon him with the resistless power of an avalanche. ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon

... you, on you, for aid relies, scions of noblest stem! The foremost place in rolls of fame, by right your fearless fathers claim; yours is the glory of their name,—'t is yours to equal them. As rushing down, when winter reigns, resistless to the shaking plains, the torrent tears its way, and all that bars its onward course sweeps to the sea with headlong force, so swept your sires the Dane and Norse;—can ye do less than they? Rise! Ressert your ancient pride, and down the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... Resistless change, when powerless to improve, Can only mar. The gold will pale to gray; Nothing remains tomorrow as to-day; The lose will not seem quite so fait, and love Must find its measures of delight made less. Ah, how ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... resistless current, they doubled that boisterous point of land since called Corlear's Hook,[29] and leaving to the right the rich winding cove of the Wallabout, they drifted into a magnificent expanse of water, surrounded by pleasant shores, whose verdure was exceedingly refreshing to the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... milder thoughts, but artfully transforming them. Changing them into scourges to drive him on. Turning water into blood, love into hate, gentleness into blind ferocity. Her image, sorrowing, humbled, but still pleading to his tenderness and mercy with resistless power, never left his mind; but, staying there, it urged him to the door; raised the weapon to his shoulder; fitted and nerved his fingers to the trigger; and cried ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... taste it; resisted as it encroached; abused as its popularity seemed to spread; and establishing its triumph at last in cheering the whole land, from the palace to the cottage, only by the slow and resistless efforts of time ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... performances of human art, at which we look with praise and wonder," says Johnson, "are instances of the resistless force of perseverance: it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united with canals. If a man was to compare the effect of a single stroke of the pickax, or of one impression of the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... waiting for us a long time, old Jube," he said, "but we're coming. And you'll see and hear our resistless tread." ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler

... the stratagems of Weston were mere child's play. We might then have had, from the most enlightened man of his age, a commentary on the statute 1st James First, which would have neutralized its mischief, and spared a hecatomb of victims. His resistless ridicule would, perhaps, have accomplished at once what was slowly and with difficulty brought about by the arguments of Scot and Webster, the establishment of the Royal Society, and a century's growth of intelligence ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts

... sunken valley of the Rio Grande; beyond that, a headlong infinity of unknown ranges, tier on tier, yellow or brown or blue; broken, tumbled, huddled, scattered, with gulfs between to tell of unseen plains and hidden happy valleys—altogether giving an impression of rushing toward him, resistless, like the waves ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... worst of the ascent. All around us stretched darkness void and horrible, leading, for all that we could see, down through veils of curling mist into illimitable depths. In front the rock was almost perpendicular. The fascination of gazing down was wellnigh resistless, but Peter ahead continually cried 'Hurry!' and the voice of Paul behind repeated 'Hurry!' so that panting, gasping, and fit to faint, with fingers clinging to the chain until the skin was blistered, with every nerve throbbing and ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... transformation into a nobler being, when the exertion of mortality has passed, and his powers seem to repose in the tranquillity of Heaven: not Apollo, when straining his youthful strength in drawing the bow; but Apollo, when the weapon was discharged, watching, with unexulting eye, its resistless course, and serene in the enjoyment of immortal power: not St Michael when struggling with the Demon, and marring the beauty of angelic form by the violence of earthly passion, but St Michael in the moment of unruffled triumph, restraining the might of Almighty power, and radiant ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison



Words linked to "Resistless" :   overwhelming, inactive, supine, resistible, passive, unresisting, overpowering, irresistible



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