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Unapproachable   Listen
Unapproachable

adjective
1.
Discouraging intimacies; reserved.
2.
Inaccessibly located or situated.  Synonyms: out of reach, unreachable, unreached.  "An unreachable canyon" , "The unreachable stars"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Unapproachable" Quotes from Famous Books



... emphasis than in his drawings. To use the words of a penetrative critic, from whom it is a pleasure to quote: "The thing about Michelangelo is this; he is not, so to say, at the head of a class, but he stands apart by himself: he is not possessed of a skill which renders him unapproached or unapproachable; but rather, he is of so unique an order, that no other artist whatever seems to suggest comparison with him." Mr. Selwyn Image goes on to define in what a true sense the words "creator" and "creative" may be applied to him: how the shows and appearances of the world ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... of the inner life by a heart thirsting after God, eager to grasp at least the outskirts of His ways, the abyss of His love for sinners, and the height of His unapproachable majesty—and it was written by a ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer

... in the home of the summers, the seats of the happy immortals, Shrouded in knee-deep blaze, unapproachable; there ever youthful Hebe, Harmonie, and the daughter of Jove, Aphrodite Whirled in the white-linked dance, with the gold-crowned Hours and ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... a jerking, abrupt tone, betraying her inward emotion. Mr. Carlyle, looking somewhat unapproachable, made ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... The avenue was crowded with carriages brought thither by the musical matinee, and such a throng of arriving guests pressed round the entrance, decorated with a kind of tent with scallopings of red velvet, that he deemed the house unapproachable. How could he manage to get in? And how in his cassock could he reach the Princess, and ask for a minute's conversation with Baroness Duvillard? Amidst all his feverishness he had not thought of these difficulties. However, he was approaching the door on foot, asking himself how he ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... pleasant fertile valley, where the sun seems ever to shine and the crops never fail. Hidden away from the sight of passers-by upon the roads, protected from sight by lines of sentries night and day, and unapproachable, save by those immediately connected with them, were the secret defences, huge forts with long-range ordnance, which rose, fired, and disappeared again, offering no mark for the enemy. Constructed in strictest secrecy, there were a dozen of such fortresses, the true details of which the ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux

... part in the simple joys of life, that I take delight in my youth and am happy? Is the Count de Provence right in charging me, as with a crime, that I am the chief counsellor of the king, and that I venture to give him my views regarding political matters? Am I really condemned to stand at an unapproachable distance from the people and the court, like a beautiful statue? Is it denied to me to have feeling, to love and to hate, like everybody else? Is the Queen of France nothing but the sacrificial lamb which the dumb idol ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... suggested to me in desolate exclamations, completed by shrugs, in interrupted phrases, in hints ending in deep sighs. The woods were unmoved, like a mask—heavy, like the closed door of a prison—they looked with their air of hidden knowledge, of patient expectation, of unapproachable silence. The Russian was explaining to me that it was only lately that Mr. Kurtz had come down to the river, bringing along with him all the fighting men of that lake tribe. He had been absent for several months—getting himself adored, I suppose—and had come down unexpectedly, with the intention ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... tobacco known to commerce. Although unknown to this country—both the cigars and the leaf tobacco have a deserved reputation in Europe, and it is beyond all question one of the finest tobaccos in the world for cigars. These cigars have a delicacy of flavor unapproachable in any other variety, and may justly be termed the finest at least of all South American cigars. It is one of the finest burning tobaccos in the world, and does not fail to suit the taste of the most fastidious of smokers. The finest are of dark color and wholly free from any rank or unpleasant ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... qualities of infinitude? Add a great many bricks together, and they form a pyramid as huge as the peak of Teneriffe. Add all the common minds together that the world ever produced, and the mind of a Shakspere towers over the whole, in all the grandeur of unapproachable infinity. That which is infinite admits of neither increase nor diminution. Is it not so with genius of a certain altitude? Homer, Milton, Shakspere, were perhaps men of equal powers. Homer was, it is said, a beggar; Shakspere an illiterate wool-comber; ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... reason of her authority in position, was entitled to wear a costume of white, whereas the waiters of lower rank were obliged by house rules to attire themselves in dark skirts. To Sam's eyes, therefore, Nora, arrayed in this distinguishing garb, appeared at once the more fair and the more unapproachable. As she sat, the light glinting upon her glasses, her chin well upheld, her whole attitude austere and commanding, Sam felt his courage sink lower and lower, until he became abject and abased. Fascinated none the less, he gazed, until Curly poked ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough

... vigorous, intellectual, capable personality always made an excellent impression upon parents and guardians. By the girls themselves she was regarded in a less favourable light: the very qualities which gave her success as a Principal caused her to seem distant and unapproachable. Her pupils held her in wholesome awe, but never expanded in her presence; to them she was the supreme authority, the "she-who-must-be-obeyed", but not a human individual who might be met on any common ground of ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil

... a stone wall, for thus I regarded it, became at last almost unendurable. Clavering shy, and the secretary unapproachable—how was I to gain anything? The short interviews I had with Mary did not help matters. Haughty, constrained, feverish, pettish, grateful, appealing, everything at once, and never twice the same, I learned to dread, even while I coveted, an interview. She appeared ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green

... a little flushed from his hasty toilet and the thought of meeting one who had been cold and disapproving toward the belle of Forestville, but Mildred said "good-morning" so affably and naturally that he was made quite at ease, and Mrs. Jocelyn, who had seemed unapproachable, smiled upon him so kindly that he was inclined to believe her almost as pretty as her daughter. As for Belle and the children, he already felt well acquainted with them. Mrs. Atwood and Susan looked at each other ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... escape, in a word, from the wretched huts wherein for a little he had sheltered his heart; to burn all behind him, and so prevent the weakness of a return; and to go and pitch his tent further, higher, he knew not where—upon some unapproachable mountain where the air is icy, but before the eyes, the vasty stretches of ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... called by the young men—though softly and amongst themselves, for they were afraid of arousing the ire of the other girls, while they stood in awe of Genevieve, in a dimly religious way, as a something mysteriously beautiful and unapproachable. ...
— The Game • Jack London

... into the room when he did. I hung on his arm, and looked up into his dear shrewd eyes, so clear and kind, so full of wisdom. The boarders were with one accord servile to him; even Doctor Krummlaut, a clever man with far better brains probably than Bernd. Bernd, from habit, stiffened and became unapproachable the instant the middle class public in the shape of the congratulatory boarders appeared. He doesn't even know he's like that, his training has made it second nature. You should have seen his lofty, complete indifference. It was dreadfully rude really, and oh how they loved him for it! They ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley

... Canada. It was said, I remember, that the fruit could not be carried, but perhaps it was owing to a wish not to wound the susceptibilities of the Old World that none of the beautiful products of your orchards were there, and because you did not wish that any of your modest-looking but unapproachable pommes grises, or blushing and splendid Pippin apples, should appear in the character of apples of discord. It may have been owing to the same wish not to excite unduly and unnecessarily the envy of others, that no machinery was ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell

... think uncultivated white people are unapproachable in downright rudeness, and yet, alas! they are our superiors. Will prejudice ever be obliterated from the minds of the people? Will man ever cease to prejudge his fellow-being for color's sake alone? Grant, O merciful God, that ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... and actual grossness. But with other and great faults, he far excelled all the poets of his time in impassioned strength, varying from vehemence to pathos. He was excelled by few of them in his fine sense of the beautiful, and his combination of passion with beauty, standing unapproachable in his own day, has ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... Mr. Palgrave, but really to explain that he had caught him in town on business, and taken him at the disadvantage of distance from his evening dress, though, of course, he did not say it in such and so many words. The speech was unnecessary. Mrs. Dillingham had told the whole story in her own unapproachable way. ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... consulted; moreover, the intervention of the newcomers did not seem to him opportune. But he was obstinate and unapproachable only when he believed his conscience involved; he received the Recollets with great benevolence and rendered them all the service possible. "He gave them abundant aid," says Latour, "and furnished them for more ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath

... cows, dogs, lest the innate female proclivity to make mischief should be found dangerous in the brute creation. Constantine lived in the latter part of the third and the beginning of the fourth century. Think of the divine repose, the unapproachable beatification of residing in a land where no woman has even peeped for ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... rather anecdotes, told alternately in verse and rhymed prose, with all the brilliance of rhetoric, the richness of alliteration, antithesis, and imitative sound, and the endless grammatical subtilties of which the Arabic language is capable. The work of Hariri is considered the unapproachable model of this style of narrative throughout all the East. Rueckert called his translation "The Metamorphoses of Abou-Seyd of Serudj,"—the name of the hero of the story. In this work he has shown the capacity of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... as a part of a new system, every time that it begins its course at a new point. One lesson, however, we are invariably taught by all, however approached or viewed,—that the work of the Great Spirit of nature is as deep and unapproachable in the lowest as in the noblest objects,—that the Divine mind is as visible in its full energy of operation on every lowly bank and mouldering stone, as in the lifting of the pillars of heaven, and settling the foundation of the earth; and that to the rightly perceiving mind, there is ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... schemings under "dignity." I am a man of the people, not afraid to be seen as the human being that I am. I laugh when I feel like it. I have no sense of jar when people call me "Matt." I have a good time, and I shall stay young as long as I stay alive. Wealth hasn't made me a solemn ass, fenced in and unapproachable. The custom of receiving obedience and flattery and admiration has not made me a turkey-cock. Life is a joke; and when the joke's on me, I laugh as heartily as when it's on the ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... more he thought the less he liked it, but all the more he felt necessity at his throat. And, as always with him, when he thought he seemed as if turned to stone. 'One way or another,' Milo tells us, 'every man of the House of Anjou had his unapproachable side, so accustomed were they to ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... a lodge in some vast wilderness!" Some region unapproachable of Print, Where never cablegram could gain access, And telephones were not, nor any hint Of tidings new or old, but Man might pipe His soul ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... no translation can adequately represent, while none can altogether destroy the unapproachable magnificence of the description which follows, of the majestic coming forth of God in answer to his cry. It stands at the very highest point, even when compared with the other sublime passages of a like kind in Scripture. ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren

... little girls stared up at her with wondering, terrified eyes. Her tone was very morose. They saw that she was unapproachable, and looked down again. They ate their unpalatable meal quickly, and in silence. Alison kept the kettle boiling on ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade

... his wife had attempted to condole with her brother-in-law, Prince Peter had observed a look of pain on his brother's face. The look had at once been masked by an expression of unapproachable pride, and he had begun to question her about their flat, and the price she paid. At luncheon, before the family and guests, he had been witty and sarcastic as usual. Towards every one, excepting the children, ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... had been close to him in the illuminated car, but they were alien, unapproachable, when they stood on an unfamiliar street-crossing snow-dimmed and silent with night. He stared at a street-sign and found that he was on Madison Avenue, up in the Fifties. As they turned east on Fifty-blankth Street he stopped under the street-light, ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... supernatural, weird power gave the woman beside him a peculiar, incomprehensible charm of which he had not been conscious before. The fact that in his stupidity he unconsciously threw a poetic glamour over her made her seem, as it were, whiter, sleeker, more unapproachable. ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... confusion of molten soil and superheated steam, and so remained spinning furiously and maintaining an eruption that lasted for years or months or weeks according to the size of the bomb employed and the chances of its dispersal. Once launched, the bomb was absolutely unapproachable and uncontrollable until its forces were nearly exhausted, and from the crater that burst open above it, puffs of heavy incandescent vapour and fragments of viciously punitive rock and mud, saturated with Carolinum, and each a centre of scorching and ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... be little doubt that the Sun was regarded partly as a symbol, partly as a manifestation of the unseen, unapproachable Divinity. Its light and heat, its power of calling into active exercise the mysterious forces of germination and ripening, the universality of its influence, all seemed the fit expressions of the yet greater powers which belonged to the Invisible. What happened in a total solar eclipse? For a short ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers

... drooping branches, adorned with red flowers. Thousands of birds, the lories, and greenfinches, and gold-winged pigeons, not to speak of the noisy paroquets, flew about in the green branches. Below, on the bosom of the water, were a couple of shy and unapproachable black swans. This rara avis of the Australian rivers soon disappeared among the windings of the Wimerra, which water the charming landscape in ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... a means of communication with friendly cities or peoples situated between the two Syrtes. To vanquish the difficulties of such an enterprise might also strike terror into the Numidian garrisons of other towns, and the subjects of Jugurtha might feel that no stronghold was safe when the unapproachable Capsa had been taken or destroyed. But the difficulties of the task were great. The Numidians of these regions were more attached to a pastoral life than to agriculture; the stores of corn to be found along the route were therefore ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... nature, surrounded by low, marshy grounds, rendering it almost unapproachable from the land side, save by the causeways over which the roads ran, with a large and convenient harbor and with easy access to the sea, was already rich and populous. The citizens of La Rochelle were noted for their independent ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... smoothness of texture, its brilliancy—which laundering increases—its wearing qualities, and its exquisite freshness. The celebrated Irish linen is the most valuable staple in the market, and on account of its fineness and strength, and particularly its bright color, it attains an unapproachable excellence because the best processes are used throughout the entire manufacture. Linen is less elastic and pliable than cotton ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley

... no doubt, men in every station who helped to keep the world sweet and clean, and she believed that Wyllard was to be counted among them. He certainly differed in many ways from Gregory, but then Gregory was unapproachable. She did not remember that it was four years since she had seen Hawtrey, and that her ideas had been a ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss

... beyond the bounds where any human sympathy could be of use. She was no longer his wife, nor he her husband; she was no longer even a fellow mortal between whom and himself there might be some common ground of understanding. Absolutely alone and unapproachable, he knew that she had reached the ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... so constructed as to make it impossible that any one less expert than a practised house-breaker should get in or out of any of the windows looking that way. From the hall there were no less than four windows looking to the front; but they were all equally unapproachable. ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... statesmen a shudder. He cared not a rap for convention. He was not in the least afraid of his permanent officials, who so often control their department and their political chief with it. A Cabinet Minister in Britain is hedged with a certain divinity and is almost unapproachable except under stated conditions. Lloyd George bewildered people with his approachability, his unpretentiousness. During the strain of the railway struggle he would exchange a cheery word with the waiting newspaper reporters as he passed them on going in or out of his office, an ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot

... supper, in the disorderly dining-room, with the farther end of the table piled with ledgers, Mrs. Maitland was more unapproachable than ever. When Nannie asked a timid question about the evening, she either did not hear, or she affected not to. At any rate, she vouchsafed no answer. Her face was still red, and she seemed to hide behind her evening paper. To Nannie's gentle ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... hues of heaven, should move our [1] brush or pen to paint frail fairness or to weave a web of words that glow with gladdening gleams of God, so unapproachable, and yet so near and full of radiant relief in clouds and ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... fixes itself upon images of the home, the Glanz und Wonne, he is about to describe, memory lights his countenance as if with the reflection of some place of unearthly splendour. "In a far land," his words fall measured and sweet, "unapproachable to footsteps of yours, a fastness there stands called Monsalvat. In the centre of it, a bright temple, more precious than anything known upon earth. Within this is preserved as the most sacred of relics a vessel of blessed and miraculous power. It was brought to earth by a legion of ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... particular basket had contained materials for Oriental bead-work; and no sooner had it reached the floor than each item of its contents appeared to become possessed of a separate and particular devil impelling it to travel at headlong speed to some remote and unapproachable corner as distant as ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... they are not to be referred to the Noachian deluge. I am not sure but I should betake myself in extremities to the liberal divinities of Greece, rather than to my country's God. Jehovah, though with us he has acquired new attributes, is more absolute and unapproachable, but hardly more divine, than Jove. He is not so much of a gentleman, not so gracious and catholic, he does not exert so intimate and genial an influence on nature, as many a god of the Greeks. I should fear the ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... to work remarkably well in rural districts, in the state, and in the nation, has certainly been far less successful as applied to cities. Accordingly our cities have come to furnish topics for reflection to which writers and orators fond of boasting the unapproachable excellence of American institutions ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... crowd with frantic cheers, because they had just become aware that a lady was asleep in one of the upper rooms, which were by that time unapproachable, owing to the lower part of the ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... more than about seven miles long, by five or six broad. It is situated at the lower extremity of the plain called Huleh, and is almost entirely surrounded by flat marshy ground, thickly set with reeds and canes, which make the lake itself almost unapproachable. The depth of the Huleh is not known. It is a favorite resort of aquatic birds, and is said to contain an ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson

... alarming nature of my illness, I only know that there were several days when Richard never left the house, but waited, hour after hour, in the library below, for the news of my condition, and when even Uncle Leonard came home in the middle of the day, and walked about the house, silent and unapproachable. ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris

... summer, feeling very sore and full of reflections. He had not really meant to kiss Juliette, at least he thought not, and it was unthinkable that she meant to kiss him, since, so far as he was aware, no young woman ever wanted to do such a thing, being, every one of them, doubtless, as unapproachable and frigid as the topmost, snowy peak of the Alps. (Such was, and always remained his attitude, where the other sex was concerned, one not without inconvenience in a practical world of disillusions.) No, it was that confounded flower which brought about this ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... knits his fortunes to the stars, Even so doth he resemble them in secret, Wonderful, still inexplicable courses! Trust me, they do him wrong. All will be solved. These smokes at once will kindle into flame— The edges of this black and stormy cloud Will brighten suddenly, and we shall view The unapproachable glide out in splendor. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... skilful phrases, which suggested knowledge, while avoiding flattery, was introduced to the Bavarian baron and a French naval officer. But he was not interesting to them, nor they to him; Kitty was surrounded and unapproachable; and a flood of new arrivals distracted Madame d'Estrees' attention. The Ricci, who had noticed the restrained empressement of his reception, pounced on the young man, taming her ways and gestures to what ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... eaves-droppers, though, of course, exposed to view. The sun had just set on the supreme content of Carter when Jorgenson and Jaffir sat down side by side between the knightheads of the Emma and, public but unapproachable, impressive and secret, began to converse ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... left Nan. They traveled from her braids to her feet. Why, his angry gaze demanded, was she sitting here in a beguiling masquerade—silly, too! The masquerade was silly. But it made her into something so unapproachable in the citadel of a childhood she had no lien on any longer that his heart ached within him. Except for that one kiss in France—a kiss so cruelly repudiated after (most cruelly because she had made it seem as if it were only a part of her largess to the War) ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... lion and the elders as "the father." Such exalted figures are usually condensations or composite persons. The elders are not merely the father, but also the old, or the older ones parents in general, in so far as they are severe and unapproachable. Apparently the mother also will prove unapproachable if the adult son desires her as a wife. [The male child, on the other hand, frequently has erotic experiences with the mother. The parents connive at these, ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... for his pains; recalling the fact that by her own confession Cornelia was an accomplished flirt; steeling himself against her blandishments. When presently he heard his name pronounced in dulcet tones, he looked up with his most unapproachable air. Cornelia was holding her plate towards him with one hand, while with the other she held a fragment of cake to ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... the demagogue, as he still called him. How little, after all, did any one know of Gideon Vetch? Since he had been in office what had they learned except that he was approachable in human relations and unapproachable in political ones? ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... any of the coffee-room customers. This room was looked upon as their private property, and there they regaled themselves with the best the house could provide. It was more sacred and exclusive than the commercial-rooms of the old Bagmen days, and was strictly unapproachable by any but those for whom it ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz

... rapidly growing more and more severe, his admiration of his talents remained undiminished. For, though he had dropped metaphysics when he came to the throne, Frederick could never drop his passion for French poetry; he recognised in Voltaire the unapproachable master of that absorbing art; and for years he had made up his mind that, some day or other, he would posseder—for so he put it—the author of the Henriade, would keep him at Berlin as the brightest ornament of his court, and, above all, would have him always ready at hand ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... where they sit, inner, secure, unapproachable to analysis in the soul, Not traditions, not the outer authorities are the judges, They are the judges of outer authorities and of all traditions, They corroborate as they go only whatever corroborates themselves, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... the group, however, interest fell promptly away from Pete and centred around this more legitimate pole. But Bas turned on them all a sullenly uncommunicative face, and the idlers were quick to recognize and respect his unapproachable mood and to stand wide ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts and unapproachable ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... leeward every trip, that they must carry her back by hand along the beach. But this once managed, and a cart procured in the neighbourhood, they were able to spend the night in a pot-house at Ault Bea. Next day, the sea was unapproachable; but the next they had a pleasant passage to Poolewe, hugging the cliffs, the falling swell bursting close by them in the gullies, and the black scarts that sat like ornaments on the top of every stack and pinnacle, looking down ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... various parts of the world to make a complete chart of the heavens, and before the close of our century this work will be accomplished, some fifty or sixty millions of visible stars being placed on record with a degree of accuracy hitherto unapproachable. Moreover, other millions of stars are brought to light by the negative, which are too distant or dim to be visible with any telescopic powers yet attained—a fact which wholly discredits all previous inferences as to the limits of our sidereal system. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... unapproachable, so his counterpart-leader withdrew to the end of the corridor and waited until Doctor Corson came out. He followed Corson outside and, from the back seat of another taxi, never lost sight of the convertible until Rhoda Kane drove it into the garage ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman

... man. You're coming in with me at this, of course—not on behalf of your paper, but on your own. Work up with me, and if we're successful, I'll promise you a post on the Argus that'll be worth three times what you're getting now. I know what I'm talking about—unapproachable as our guv'nor is, I've sized him up, and if I make good in this affair, he'll do anything I want. Stick to Triffitt, my son, and Triffitt'll ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher

... don't suppose there's any more suffering here to the population than there is in the country. And they're so gay about it all. I think the outward aspect of the place and the hilarity of the sky and air must get into the people's blood. The weather is simply unapproachable; and I don't care if it is the ugliest place in the world, as you say. I suppose it is. It shrieks and yells with ugliness here and there but it never loses its spirits. That widow is from the country. When she's been a year in New York she'll ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... path which ran by our doors became suddenly impassable, the inhabitants who had business across the isle must fetch a wide circuit, and we sat in the midst in a transparent privacy, seeing, seen, but unapproachable, like bees in a glass hive. The outward and visible sign of this glamour was no more than a few ragged coco-leaf garlands round the stems of the outlying palms; but its significance reposed on the tremendous sanction of the tapu and the ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... they favour man? Can they wrong man? The unapproachable skies? Though these gave strength to the strong man, And wisdom gave to the wise; When strength is turn'd to derision, And wisdom brought to dismay, Shall we wake from a troubled vision, Or rest ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... parted doors of those celestial regions something of the glory of the New Jerusalem. She saw her pass on through the countless choirs of the angels, till she came close to the throne of God; and in the midst of the unapproachable light she saw the Child Jesus, more beautiful and glorious than she had ever seen Him before; and then, even as she gazed on Him, forgetting all beside, the golden gates closed on the scene, and shut it from her eyes. Now when ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton

... was exceedingly lovely. She seemed unapproachable, elusive, mysterious, and yet her art touched the material. She contrived to bring out how successful Mister Shultz was in the bakery business, and in the next breath told nonchalantly of the vast sums ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote

... warm one. Jane Macalister was icily cold, however, as unapproachable as an iceberg. Boris watched her with anxiety. He knew well that there was no chance for him and Kitty; they would both be punished ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade

... more beautiful than ever. The light was streaming upon her now, and although she was white and haggard she looked far less cold and unapproachable than when he had endeavoured in vain to win a glance from her in the church. He put his hand on her tangled hair. "You shall suffer no more," he repeated; "and this will grow again. And that beautiful mane—it is mine. I begged it ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect, that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts, unapproachable bogs, Scythian ice, or a frozen sea, so, in this work of mine, in which I have compared the lives of the greatest men with one another, after passing through those periods which probable reasoning can reach to and real history find a footing in, I might very well say of those that ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... trusted. We may safely assert that the preacher deals with absolute values, for all art does that. But we may not assert that he is the only person that does so or that his is the only or the unapproachable way. No; he, too, is an artist. Hence, a sermon is not a contribution to, but an interpretation of, knowledge, made in terms of the religious experience. It is taking truth out of its compressed and abstract form, its impersonal and scientific language, and returning ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... great, distinctive graces of an English landscape are the hawthorn hedges, the hedge-row trees, and the everlasting and unapproachable greenness of the grass-fields they surround and embellish. In these beautiful features, England surpasses all other countries in the world. These make the peculiar charm of her rural scenery to a traveller from abroad. These are the salient lineaments of Motherland's face which the memories of myriads ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... his promise of marriage, now she is an orphan and here; she is betrothed to him, yet before her very eyes he is dancing attendance on a certain enchantress. And although this enchantress has lived in, so to speak, civil marriage with a respectable man, yet she is of an independent character, an unapproachable fortress for everybody, just like a legal wife—for she is virtuous, yes, holy Fathers, she is virtuous. Dmitri Fyodorovitch wants to open this fortress with a golden key, and that's why he is insolent to me now, trying to get money from me, though he has wasted ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... manoevres were sometimes dictated by such impulses that her strategy was peculiarly baffling. The thought of her past unkindness to Clementina may still have rankled in her, or she may simply have felt the need of outdoing Miss Milray by an unapproachable benefaction. It is certain that when Baron Belsky came to Venice a few weeks after her own arrival, they began to pose at each other with reference to Clementina; she with a measure of consciousness, he with the singleness of a nature that was all pose. In his forbearance ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... preparations, Lord Cochrane sailed on to the port, and boldly entered the channel. The troops were all sent below, while the two little vessels entered, and anchored boldly off Fort Ingles. The swell was so heavy that even the landing-place was unapproachable. The boats had been towed on the lee side of the ships, and when shouted to to send a boat ashore an answer was given that these had been lost in a storm. The Spaniards, however, were not satisfied, and alarm-guns were fired and troops brought ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty

... the canyon. It was such a victory as they could not afford to gain again, and they were glad, when the long flight was over, to follow their wives and little ones to the south. There, in the deserts of Arizona, on well-nigh unapproachable, isolated bluffs, they built new towns, and their few descendants, the Moquis, live in them to this day, preserving more carefully and purely the history and veneration of their forefathers than ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... in various shapes and sizes stud the Southern seas, are sometimes rendered almost unapproachable by the immense waves which fall upon them. Even in the calmest weather these huge breakers may be seen falling with prolonged roar on the beach. The lightest undulation on the sea, which might almost escape observation away ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne

... detected by him, is really "the work of a single poet, perhaps the greatest in all the world's history." If the original poet did no more than is here allotted to him, especially if he left out the purpose of Zeus and the person of Thetis in Book I., we do not quite understand his unapproachable greatness. He must certainly have drawn a rather commonplace Achilles, as we shall see, and we confess to preferring the Iliad as ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... goodness; is not holy, but holiness; is not infinite, but infinity. This, I apprehend, will have struck many readers as merely a rhetorical bravura; sublime, perhaps, and fitted to exalt the feeling of awe connected with so unapproachable a mystery, but otherwise not throwing any new light upon the darkness of the idea as a problem before the intellect. Yet indirectly perhaps it does, when brought out into its latent sense by placing ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... however this may be, we are told that when the news of her husband's death was brought to the Empress at a banquet, she was to all appearance overcome with horror and grief. She left the table with streaming eyes and spent the next few days in unapproachable ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... without a murmur. Some said that the gentlemen on the Treasury Bench in the House of Commons did not look to be comfortable. Mr. Daubeny sat with his hat over his brow, mute, apparently impassive and unapproachable, during the reading of the Speech and the moving and seconding of the Address. The House was very full, and there was much murmuring on the side of the Opposition;—but from the Government benches hardly a sound was ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... rainbow. In each of them I saw one abutment of a tiny rainbow. When I stepped a pace or two to the other side, I saw the other abutment. Of course I could not see the completed bow in so small an area. These fragments are as unapproachable as the bow in the clouds. I also saw that where a suspended dewdrop becomes a jewel, or displays rainbow tints, you can see only one at a time—to the right or left of you. It also is a fragment of a rainbow. Those persons who report beholding a great display ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... feature of a small church, with the utmost pathos and dignity, thus doing incomparably in his own way—the way of the colourist and the warm, the essentially human realist—what Michelangelo had, soaring high above earth, accomplished with unapproachable sublimity in the Prophets and Sibyls of the ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips

... literature, and philosophy. Yet, strange to say, during two centuries thus marvellously illustrated by genius, intellect, and capacity in other departments of human exertion, there has not been a single great dramatic poet. Shakspeare still stands alone in solitary and unapproachable grandeur, to sustain, by his single arm, the tragic reputation of his country. Authors of passing or local celebrity have arisen: Otway has put forth some fine conceptions, and composed one admirable tragedy; Sheridan sketched some brilliant satires; Miss Baillie ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... lake—when it was suddenly discovered that our little steamer, the Toki Maru, was on fire. With very little warning, flames sprang up from the hold—no one ever discovered how the fire began—and almost in an instant the half of the steamer which lay aft of the hold became unapproachable on account of the dense volumes of black smoke which flew in clouds over it, driven by the head-wind against which the little steamer was ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... "Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth (1 Cor. 2:13)," he used the language to which you will find no parallel in the literature of mere human genius. And no man of candor or intelligence can pass from the writings even of the unapproachable Shakespeare into the perusal of the Bible without feeling that the difference between the two is not one simply of degree, but of kind; he has not merely ascended to a loftier outlook in the same human dwelling, but he has gone into a new region ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans

... man! How fine the Idylls are! Lord! what a blessed thing it is to read a man who really can write. I thought nothing could be finer than the first poem, till I came to the third; but when I had read the last, it seemed to me to be absolutely unapproachable." Other literary likings rose and fell with him, but he never faltered in ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... the awful baptism of fire and blood, is eloquent with the deeds of many patriots, warriors, and statesmen; but these all fall into relations to one prominent and commanding figure, towering up above the whole group in unapproachable majesty, whose exalted character, warm and bright with every public and private virtue, and vital with the essential spirit of wisdom, has burst all sectional and national bounds, and made the name of Washington ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various

... monsoon wind, which has come for four or five months from southwest, changes to northeast, blowing upon the east coast of the peninsula, where are no good harbors. The consequent swell made the shore often unapproachable, and so forbade support from fleet to army. The change of the monsoon is also frequently marked by violent hurricanes. The two commanders, therefore, had to quit a region where their stay might be dangerous as well as useless. Had Trincomalee not been lost, Hughes, ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... Sheerness, and two from Farnley, one of the wreck of an Indiaman, and the other of a ship of the line taking stores, would form a series, not indeed as attractive at first sight as many others, but embracing perhaps more of Turner's peculiar, unexampled, and unapproachable gifts than any other group of drawings which could be selected, the choice being confined ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin

... her father, were not large, and had gray pupils with a cold glance, penetrating and reasoning. Her shapely form was somewhat too slender; her posture and movements too stiff and ceremonious. She passed in society for a haughty, cold, unapproachable, original, and even eccentric young lady. On the stage was presented a play which had been preceded by immense praise; in the theatre had collected all that bore the name of high and fashionable society in the city. The boxes were filled, except one, which only just before the beginning ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

... prove it to me I might sleep better. Just at present I'm ready for anything truly criminal. There was a killing at the Club all right. I assumed the role of the defunct. Now I haven't any money; I've overdrawn my balance and my salary; Portlaw is bilious, peevish, unapproachable. If I asked you for a loan I'd only fall a victim again to my insatiable scientific curiosity. So I'll just lie here and browse on cigarettes and ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... Sculpture and painting, jewels and gold, gorgeous hangings, and stained-glass that the moderns vainly attempt to imitate, the purple and fine linen of the priestly vestments, embroidery that to this hour remains unapproachable in its delicacy of finish and in the perfect harmony of colours—all these were to be found in almost incredible profusion in our monastic churches. You hear some people work themselves into a frenzy against the idolatrous worship of our forefathers; ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... common paint. We use the highest grade of lead and the purest linseed oil. Varnish also of unapproachable quality, guaranteed to stand exposure to any climate. There's nothing to equal our ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss

... beautiful country of beautiful France. It is the chateau once more. It is the same, but changed. The unapproachable elegance, the inviolable security, have witnessed invasion. The right wing of the chateau is in ruins, with traces of fire upon the blackened walls; while here and there, a broken statue or a roofless temple, ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade

... and flowers reft into fragments by her passionate hand, or rendered shapeless by the fitful searches of a throbbing and bewildered brain for any resting-place, than adorning such tranquillity. So obdurate, so unapproachable, so unrelenting, one would have thought that nothing could soften such a woman's nature, and that everything in life ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... insurgents, in one of the narrow roads which bordered the demesne, and where, from its vicinity, they had imagined themselves secure. As they moved down this defile with their noble commandant at their head, a heavy fire of musketry assailed them from both sides; and as the assailants were unapproachable, they had no resource but to gallop on. But they had no sooner reached the wider part of the road, than they found themselves fired on again from behind a barricade of carts and waggons drawn across the road. The ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... honesty, their reputation, and their age, as well as for their noble birth, I spent my days in a very pleasant manner: although, in their thirst for knowledge, they often kept me hard at work for ten hours running, all four of us being locked up together in a room, and unapproachable to everybody, even to friends ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... there were moments when I sincerely felt that I would not exchange the trampled causeways of the London streets for the greenest meadows that bordered Rotha or Derwentwater. There were days of early summer when London rose from her morning bath of mist in a splendour truly unapproachable; when no music heard of man seemed comparable with the long diapason of the crowded streets; when from morn to eve the hours ran with an inconceivable gaiety and lightness, and the eye was in turn inebriated with the ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson

... that he can come out of his own shell and give his men a chance to understand him as a human being rather than as an autocrat giving orders. Nothing more unfortunate can happen to an officer than to come to be regarded by his subordinates as unapproachable, for such a reputation isolates him from the main problems of command responsibility as well as its chief rewards. So holding himself, he will never be able to see his forces in their true light, and will either have to exercise snap ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... Launfal," requires a deal of beating. The justness and fineness of her sentiment in all that concerns the delicacies of the human heart are also remarkable. But her true business was that of the storyteller. In that trade she was almost unapproachable in her day. There may have been—indeed, there was—a more considerable poet living; but a more excellent writer of romances, than the author of "Eliduc," it would have been ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France

... senses that he really longed for? His aspirations grew in the natural soil of those life-feelings which dictate that religion and morality shall not destroy natural impulses, but sanctify them. Before his soul stood a pure, chaste, maidenly image of unapproachable and intangible holiness and loveliness. In his own words, his nature passionately and ardently embraced the outward forms of this conception whose essence was the love of all that is noble and pure. No other artist ever possessed a deeper sense of the need of ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl

... and the stiff pomp of a princely court prevailed more and more. Bonaparte required of his wife that she should there represent the dignity and the grandeur of her new position; that she should appear as the first, the most exalted, and the most unapproachable of women. In the Tuileries there were no more evenings of pleasant social gatherings, of joyous conversation with friends whom affection made equals, and who, in love and admiration, recognizing Bonaparte's ascendency, ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... more wisdom in their choice than their masters have, inasmuch as they have planted their town within a few hundred yards of the head of the navigation; whereas the Government town is three miles further up the river, and is unapproachable by steamers, or even by small craft. The two, however, will be joined together ere long, (most likely they are by this time,) as they are rising rapidly into importance. For the beauty of the country between Maitland and the sea, I cannot say much: it used to remind me of Lower Bengal, being ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson

... content. She had got over her fear of him; they were good comrades if they were nothing more. It was happiness to him to be by her side even on those terms. He thought of it all as he looked at her. How distant she had seemed once to him; what an unapproachable goddess. Yet there she was by his side in a hut he ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... within the last week died of want and of exposure to the weather: for which that Recording Angel seemed to have a regular fixed place in his sum, as if they were its halfpence. All such things she would hear discussed, as we, my lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, in our unapproachable magnificence never hear them, and from all such things she would fly with the wings of ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... the grizzly bear is a dreaded creature. Were he possessed of the fleetness of the lion or tiger, he would be a more terrible assailant than either; and it is not too much to say that his haunts would be unapproachable by man. Compared with the horse, however, he is slow of foot; and there is another circumstance scarcely less favourable to those who pass through his district—he is not a tree-climber. Indeed, he does not inhabit the forest; but there is usually some timber in the neighbourhood of his ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... had both been so much accustomed to see the origin of species, and especially the appearance of man on the stage of earth, hidden in impenetrable and unapproachable secrecy, that every attempt at clearing up this darkness very naturally appeared to both as an attack upon the creative activity of God. The mode of reasoning to which mankind, in its scientific as well as in its religious meditations, ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... flew, or playing sweet old melodies at the piano. The young officers were rather afraid of her. She was "a somewhat superior old maid," said a youngster whom she had found it expedient to repress. Some women declared her a trifle unapproachable, unsympathetic perhaps, but even that did not seem to disconcert her. Something happened ere long that did, however, for a few months after adjournment of the court Davies reappeared at Laramie. He had actually ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... surrendered that post, with those of Mabouia and Dalincourt; but Fedon, the leader of the insurgent slaves, who knew he could expect no mercy, retired at the head of about 300 men to two strong and almost unapproachable positions, called Morne Quaquo and Ache's Camp, or Foret Noir, in the mountains of ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis



Words linked to "Unapproachable" :   unreached, offish, inaccessible, unaccessible, unapproachability, standoffish, approachable, out of reach



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