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surmount
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  • And at his last stop on the island, at the high seawall the Marines had to surmount to get onto Tarawa, Howlin' Mad saw an example of Marine valor.†   (source)
  • When they were able to arrange a meeting, surmounting all of Blanca's usual obstacles in addition to the new ones imposed by Pedro's job, they would find themselves more full of anguish than desire.†   (source)
  • When the man from the Ministry accused him of insincerity, Tomas nearly felt guilty; he had to surmount a moral barrier to be able to persevere in his lie: I suppose he did introduce himself, he said, but because his name didn't ring a bell, I immediately forgot it.†   (source)
  • "Thomas, do you think I would want to subject Shiva to a risk he couldn't surmount?†   (source)
  • You must see this slave, this black Aristotle, moving slowly, with sweet patience, with a patience not of mere man, but of God-inspired faith-see him moving slowly as he surmounts each and every opposition.†   (source)
  • The dogs fall silent at the edge of my spell, and where the king's hall surmounts the town, the blind old Shaper, harp clutched tight to his fragile chest, stares futilely down, straight at me.†   (source)
  • But fate has its master in the faith of those who surmount it, and limitation has its limits for those who, though disillusioned, live greatly.†   (source)
  • There was no essential drama, no conflicts to overcome or barriers to surmount.†   (source)
  • As long as blacks and whites remained apart—with the whites singing "Dixie" and the blacks singing "Lift Every Voice and Sing," with the whites getting scholarships and the blacks getting jobs picking cotton and tomatoes, with the whites going to college and the blacks eating MoonPies and drinking Dr Pepper—the Piedmonts and the Benningtons could weather any storm or surmount any threat.†   (source)
  • Surmounting his weakness, he got up from his seat and jerked the window straps up and down trying to open the window.†   (source)
  • Kunthi was different from the other women, quieter, more reserved, and for all that we tried to be at ease with her there was a barrier which we could not surmount.†   (source)
  • There was nothing a sterile house in Victoria Peak could mount that he could not surmount.†   (source)
  • To the dismay of the Japanese climbers, however, the ladder was falling apart and had become partially detached from the rock, so ninety minutes of strenuous climbing were required to surmount this 20-foot cliff.†   (source)
  • The Baron raised his voice to surmount the sudden noise, said, "I hope you'll not be discontented with the performance of my nephew today, Count Fenring.†   (source)
  • It was a possibility, but again there were too many obstacles to surmount, too much accuracy demanded beyond the limits of an air-compressed weapon.†   (source)
  • The deaths were unavoidable, but Eragon regretted them all the same, for the warriors' attacks were merely a distraction; they had little chance of actually surmounting the city's defenses.†   (source)
  • She was the only one in the family who did not lose her serenity, thanks to her training in surmounting pain and the fact that her grandmother had often explained to her the circumstances and rituals of death.†   (source)
  • "I cannot surmount this unintelligible obstacle," I said.†   (source)
  • But the peculiarity of the thief is that he is enclosed in a glass ball, and on the glass ball there is a surmounting cross, and it looks like the emperor's symbol of rule.†   (source)
  • She knew from the effort, the rise in his voice to surmount a difficult word that it was the first time he had said "we."†   (source)
  • I heard that Tull's bridge was gone; I said "Thanks, O Lord, O Mighty Ruler of all"; for by those dangers and difficulties which I should have to surmount I saw that He had not abandoned me; that my reception again into His holy peace and love would be the sweeter for it.†   (source)
  • And there would fall between them sometimes long rigid silences, when, in a state of mind which annoyed Lily in her, half plaintive, half resentful, she seemed unable to surmount the tempest calmly, or to laugh as they laughed, but in her weariness perhaps concealed something.†   (source)
  • "As to that," cried d'Artagnan, after a moment of reflection, "I shall surmount it, be assured."†   (source)
  • Such an attempt of course must have difficulty which no genius could surmount.†   (source)
  • She made an effort to surmount the repugnance with which he inspired her.†   (source)
  • That natural law surmounts every other; we can't help what it clashes with."†   (source)
  • The administrative board of Radcliffe did not realize how difficult they were making my examinations, nor did they understand the peculiar difficulties I had to surmount.†   (source)
  • But at the period when I was in love with Gilberte, I still believed that Love did really exist, apart from ourselves; that, allowing us, at the most, to surmount the obstacles in our way, it offered us its blessings in an order in which we were not free to make the least alteration; it seemed to me that if I had, on my own initiative, substituted for the sweetness of a confession a pretence of indifference, I should not only have been depriving myself of one of the joys of which I had…†   (source)
  • And the central square of the town occupied by the old and yet not ungraceful county courthouse, a cupola with a clock and some pigeons surmounting it, the four principal business streets of the small town facing it.†   (source)
  • Then he advanced to the stockade, threw over his crutch, got a leg up, and with great vigour and skill succeeded in surmounting the fence and dropping safely to the other side.†   (source)
  • Between people of distant climes there is always the possibility of romance, but the various branches of Indians know too much about each other to surmount the unknowable easily.†   (source)
  • And as she began to go with Miss Pym from jar to jar, choosing, nonsense, nonsense, she said to herself, more and more gently, as if this beauty, this scent, this colour, and Miss Pym liking her, trusting her, were a wave which she let flow over her and surmount that hatred, that monster, surmount it all; and it lifted her up and up when—oh! a pistol shot in the street outside!†   (source)
  • Upon surmounting it Helen saw the rising sun, and so glorious a view confronted her that she was unable to answer Bo's wild exclamations.†   (source)
  • I had an absolute certainty that I should see again what I had already seen, but something within me said that by offering myself bravely as the sole subject of such experience, by accepting, by inviting, by surmounting it all, I should serve as an expiatory victim and guard the tranquility of my companions.†   (source)
  • But the road began to wind up; it turned and twisted in tantalizing lazy curves; it was in no hurry to surmount a hill that began to assume proportions of a mountain; it was leisurely, as were all things in Mexico except strife.†   (source)
  • …fell away into silence; but goat-footed Hans continued to blow his naive, monotonous air and lure exquisitely colored, magical tones from nature—until finally, after a long pause, a series of new instrumental voices entered, tumbling rapidly, each higher than the other, their timbres rising in self-surmounting sweetness, until every richness, every fullness held back up to now, was realized for one fleeting moment, which contained within it the perfect blissful pleasures of eternity.†   (source)
  • He was impatient with himself because he had so petty a feeling, but three or four days' firmness, during which he would not go to the shop, did not help him to surmount it; and he came to the conclusion that it would be least trouble to see her.†   (source)
  • Turning, he to-and-fro paced the cabin athwart; in the returning ascent to windward, climbing the slant deck in the ship's lee roll; without knowing it symbolizing thus in his action a mind resolute to surmount difficulties even if against primitive instincts strong as the wind and the sea.†   (source)
  • …memory, not yet of the place in which I was, but of various other places where I had lived, and might now very possibly be, would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being, from which I could never have escaped by myself: in a flash I would traverse and surmount centuries of civilisation, and out of a half-visualised succession of oil-lamps, followed by shirts with turned-down collars, would put together by degrees the component parts of my ego.†   (source)
  • Philip had never been able to surmount what he acknowledged was a defect in his resolute desire for a well ordered life, and that was his passion for living in the future; and no sooner was he settled in his work at the hospital than he had busied himself with arrangements for his travels.†   (source)
  • And, indeed, there are many others which look best when seen in this way, and I can call to mind vignettes of housetops with surmounting steeples in quite another category of art than those formed by the dreary streets of Combray.†   (source)
  • As the traveller sees farthest by day, and becomes aware of rugged mountains and trackless plains which the friendly darkness had shrouded from his sight and mind together, so, the wayfarer in the toilsome path of human life sees, with each returning sun, some new obstacle to surmount, some new height to be attained.†   (source)
  • She was resolved against any sort of conversation with him, and turned away with a degree of ill-humour which she could not wholly surmount even in speaking to Mr. Bingley, whose blind partiality provoked her.†   (source)
  • But soon I began to hope, and then I said, 'I will haf her if I die for it,' and so I will!" cried Mr. Bhaer, with a defiant nod, as if the walls of mist closing round them were barriers which he was to surmount or valiantly knock down.†   (source)
  • The walking party had crossed the lane, and were surmounting an opposite stile, and the Admiral was putting his horse in motion again, when Captain Wentworth cleared the hedge in a moment to say something to his sister.†   (source)
  • *d I am persuaded that, if ever a despotic government is established in America, it will find it more difficult to surmount the habits which free institutions have engendered than to conquer the attachment of the citizens to freedom.†   (source)
  • My eye passed all other objects to rest on those most remote, the blue peaks; it was those I longed to surmount; all within their boundary of rock and heath seemed prison-ground, exile limits.†   (source)
  • An air of haste and excitement pervades the party, and as the tall hat (surmounting Mr. Smallweed the younger) alights, Mr. Smallweed the elder pokes his head out of window and bawls to Mr. Guppy, "How de do, sir!†   (source)
  • But it was not in a lover's nature—it was not in Fred's, that the new anxiety raised about Mary's feeling should not surmount every other.†   (source)
  • Chapter VI The Hall Farm EVIDENTLY that gate is never opened, for the long grass and the great hemlocks grow close against it, and if it were opened, it is so rusty that the force necessary to turn it on its hinges would be likely to pull down the square stone-built pillars, to the detriment of the two stone lionesses which grin with a doubtful carnivorous affability above a coat of arms surmounting each of the pillars.†   (source)
  • So it happened he never approached the chasm thinking to surmount it, but he was beaten back; and so incessantly had he failed in the object that he had about given it over, except as a thing of chance.†   (source)
  • Not even the prospect of reward, far less any feelings of compassion alone, could surmount this apprehension.†   (source)
  • His face all at once took an expression of anger from the effort he was making to surmount his shyness.†   (source)
  • With her dark coloring and jet crown surmounting her tall figure, she seems to have a sort of kinship with the grand Scotch firs, at which she is looking up as if she loved them well.†   (source)
  • But Oliver's thoughts, like those of most other people, although they were extremely ready and active to point out his difficulties, were wholly at a loss to suggest any feasible mode of surmounting them; so, after a good deal of thinking to no particular purpose, he changed his little bundle over to the other shoulder, and trudged on.†   (source)
  • The wonderfully architectural appearance of the pillars, arches and pinnacles, surrounding and surmounting this noble entrance, struck me with admiration, resembling parts of a fine gothic cathedral, and inducing me to propose for it the name Cape Minster.†   (source)
  • Its splendid halls and suites of spacious apartments are floored with a mosaic-work of costly marbles; its windows, the whole height of each room, admit the sunshine through the most transparent of plate-glass; its high cornices are gilded, and its ceilings gorgeously painted; and a lofty dome—through which, from the central pavement, you may gaze up to the sky, as with no obstructing medium between—surmounts the whole.†   (source)
  • The ascent is precipitous, but the path is cut into continual and short windings, which enable you to surmount the perpendicularity of the mountain.†   (source)
  • The word reached his ear as a wave which he no longer had the strength to surmount passed over his head.†   (source)
  • The single window opened upon an embattled space surmounting the turret, which gave Rebecca, at first sight, some hopes of escaping; but she soon found it had no communication with any other part of the battlements, being an isolated bartisan, or balcony, secured, as usual, by a parapet, with embrasures, at which a few archers might be stationed for defending the turret, and flanking with their shot the wall of the castle on that side.†   (source)
  • At that moment the wind, as it were, surmounting all obstacles, sent the snow flying from the carriage roofs, and clanked some sheet of iron it had torn off, while the hoarse whistle of the engine roared in front, plaintively and gloomily.†   (source)
  • Before, dark and opaque bodies had surrounded me, impervious to my touch or sight; but I now found that I could wander on at liberty, with no obstacles which I could not either surmount or avoid.†   (source)
  • 61 THE CARMELITE CONVENT AT BETHUNE Great criminals bear about them a kind of predestination which makes them surmount all obstacles, which makes them escape all dangers, up to the moment which a wearied Providence has marked as the rock of their impious fortunes.†   (source)
  • Thus, one still reads in France, above the wicket of the prison in the seignorial mansion of Tourville, ~Sileto et spera~; in Ireland, beneath the armorial bearings which surmount the grand door to Fortescue Castle, ~Forte scutum, salus ducum~; in England, over the principal entrance to the hospitable mansion of the Earls Cowper: ~Tuum est~.†   (source)
  • Her sisterly tenderness could not but surmount other feelings at this moment, and her fears were the fears of affection.†   (source)
  • Thus the human mind is never left to wander across a boundless field; and, whatever may be its pretensions, it is checked from time to time by barriers which it cannot surmount.†   (source)
  • The movement was sudden; but he who watched her, was not thrown off his guard by it; for, shrinking into one of the recesses which surmount the piers of the bridge, and leaning over the parapet the better to conceal his figure, he suffered her to pass on the opposite pavement.†   (source)
  • …the two friends, (Mr and Mrs Browdie counting as no more than one,) were startled by the noise of loud and angry threatenings below stairs, which presently attained so high a pitch, and were conveyed besides in language so towering, sanguinary, and ferocious, that it could hardly have been surpassed, if there had actually been a Saracen's head then present in the establishment, supported on the shoulders and surmounting the trunk of a real, live, furious, and most unappeasable Saracen.†   (source)
  • …rapidly along; the sun was hot, but we were sheltered from its rays by a kind of canopy while we enjoyed the beauty of the scene, sometimes on one side of the lake, where we saw Mont Saleve, the pleasant banks of Montalegre, and at a distance, surmounting all, the beautiful Mont Blanc and the assemblage of snowy mountains that in vain endeavour to emulate her; sometimes coasting the opposite banks, we saw the mighty Jura opposing its dark side to the ambition that would quit its native…†   (source)
  • He had indeed frequently thought of bequeathing to them at least their liberty; but years had elapsed without his being able to surmount the legal obstacles to their emancipation, and in the mean while his old age was come, and he was about to die.†   (source)
  • His sense of right had surmounted and would continue to surmount anything that might be called antipathy.†   (source)
  • But now Tom's strong will bound together his integrity, his pride, his family regrets, and his personal ambition, and made them one force, concentrating his efforts and surmounting discouragements.†   (source)
  • The castle, indeed, was divided from that barbican by the moat, and it was impossible that the besiegers could assail the postern-door, with which the outwork corresponded, without surmounting that obstacle; but it was the opinion both of the Templar and De Bracy, that the besiegers, if governed by the same policy their leader had already displayed, would endeavour, by a formidable assault, to draw the chief part of the defenders' observation to this point, and take measures to avail…†   (source)
  • But surmounting everything was the horror at her own possible failure, the dread lest her conscience should be benumbed again, and not rise to energy till it was too late.†   (source)
  • "Yes," said Lydgate, a great leap of joy within him surmounting every other feeling; "that would pay all my debts, and leave me a little on hand.†   (source)
  • The Constitution fits the Government to control individuals, and easily to surmount such obstacles as they may be inclined to offer; but it was by no means established with a view to the possible separation of one or more of the States from the Union.†   (source)
  • An isolated individual may surmount the prejudices of religion, of his country, or of his race, and if this individual is a king he may effect surprising changes in society; but a whole people cannot rise, as it were, above itself.†   (source)
  • But the revolutionists of America are obliged to profess an ostensible respect for Christian morality and equity, which does not easily permit them to violate the laws that oppose their designs; nor would they find it easy to surmount the scruples of their partisans, even if they were able to get over their own.†   (source)
  • As the most distinguished partisans of the other side of the question are unable to surmount the obstacles which exclude them from power, they require some means of establishing themselves upon their own basis, and of opposing the moral authority of the minority to the physical power which domineers over it.†   (source)
  • The people, which is surrounded by flatterers, has great difficulty in surmounting its inclinations, and whenever it is solicited to undergo a privation or any kind of inconvenience, even to attain an end which is sanctioned by its own rational conviction, it almost always refuses to comply at first.†   (source)
  • They hold that to act with efficacy upon the press it would be necessary to find a tribunal, not only devoted to the existing order of things, but capable of surmounting the influence of public opinion; a tribunal which should conduct its proceedings without publicity, which should pronounce its decrees without assigning its motives, and punish the intentions even more than the language of an author.†   (source)
  • Think of a lion that some shepherd wounds but lightly as he leaps into a fold: the man who roused his might cannot repel him but dives into his shelter, while his flocks, abandoned, are all driven wild; in heaps huddled they are to lie, torn carcasses, before the escaping lion at one bound surmounts the palisade.†   (source)
  • It is pleasant to observe by what regular gradations we surmount the force of local prejudice, as we enlarge our acquaintance with the world.†   (source)
  • After surmounting your unconquerable horror of the bed, you will retire to rest, and get a few hours' unquiet slumber.†   (source)
  • …of which, would supersede, and render the obligations of law and government unnecessary while they remained perfectly just to each other; but as nothing but heaven is impregnable to vice, it will unavoidably happen, that in proportion as they surmount the first difficulties of emigration, which bound them together in a common cause, they will begin to relax in their duty and attachment to each other; and this remissness will point out the necessity of establishing some form of…†   (source)
  • They all fell silent, looking rather scared; the problem facing them seemed insurmountable.†   (source)
    standard prefix: The prefix "in-" in insurmountable means not and reverses the meaning of surmountable. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
  • Besides, it isn't in my nature to go down without a fight, even when things seem insurmountable.†   (source)
  • The urge to bellow at this poor sexton was almost insurmountable.†   (source)
  • Yes, that whopping two-year gap really is insurmountable, isn't it?†   (source)
  • The hole where Airlock 1 used to be is huge, but surmountable.†   (source)
    standard suffix: The suffix "-able" means able to be. This is the same pattern you see in words like breakable, understandable, and comfortable.
  • Even the price on his head might not be an insurmountable obstacle—if he were laird.†   (source)
  • She pumps her fist and laughs at me and marks down her now-insurmountable score.†   (source)
  • The consequences of me coming home bruised and having been in a fight are insurmountable.†   (source)
  • A thirty-pound weight concession to Stagehand might be insurmountable, and Woolf knew it.†   (source)
  • "That doesn't sound like an insurmountable problem," Berger said.†   (source)
  • But men's abilities are diverse, creating an insurmountable obstacle to equality of acquisitions.†   (source)
  • Everything that had seemed so hard, so insurmountable for so long, just sort of went up in smoke.†   (source)
  • "It's a problem, but I don't think it's insurmountable.†   (source)
  • The task seems insurmountable, but the water calls out to me and it is impossible not to answer.†   (source)
  • There was one insurmountable problem, however.†   (source)
  • I suspect the truth is that we are waiting, all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us.†   (source)
  • Not insurmountable at any rate.†   (source)
  • When the difficulties of a three-way set of competing interests become insurmountable, Henry chops down a tree which twists, falls, and crushes poor, difficult Banford.†   (source)
  • The Catholic Church had reason to be proud of the insurmountable virtue of Caroline O'Day, with or without her St. Michael's uniform—and of the virtue of countless others, any church could be proud; they were all virtuous with me.†   (source)
  • Then, with only two weeks to go, we hit a wall, falling sixteen points back from fourth place, a nearly insurmountable deficit.†   (source)
  • What young lovers have not found themselves at this juncture in a silence so sudden, so seemingly insurmountable that it threatens to cast doubt upon their chemistry as a couple?†   (source)
  • I fell asleep listening to his slow, even breaths, his stubbornness finally melting away in the face of insurmountable fatigue. six days after†   (source)
  • He was an extremely nice guy, and we became good friends, or as close to good friends as it's possible to be when the language barrier is almost insurmountable.†   (source)
  • Yes and no. St. Augustine maintained that there is an insurmountable barrier between God and the world.†   (source)
  • Somehow this had not seemed such an insurmountable problem back in Vegas, but— standing out on Eighth Avenue when it was cold and getting dark — it did.†   (source)
  • But the obstacles are insurmountable.†   (source)
  • The story has two objectives: the first is to inform the reader how a loving, caring parent can change to a cold, abusive monster venting frustrations on a helpless child; the second is the eventual survival and triumph of the human spirit over seemingly insurmountable odds.†   (source)
  • For several minutes, as the few lights of Sidewinder dwindled away and disappeared in the rearview, the urge to turn around and go back was almost insurmountable.†   (source)
  • The medieval philosophers had insisted that there is an insurmountable barrier between God and the Creation.†   (source)
  • It feels infinite, insurmountable, and his promise to her misguided, a reckless mistake, a terrible misreading of the measures of his own powers and will and character.†   (source)
  • For a great many climbers, the record shows, stealing time away from the daily grind has not been an insurmountable obstacle, nor has the half decade, the traffic on all of the hefty outlay of cash.†   (source)
  • His family wanted him to take up law but he felt 'an insurmountable resistance to everything but philosophy and learning.'†   (source)
  • He ran his fingers down her spine over her thin blouse, and for a moment he forgot the danger he was in, grateful for the world which purposefully puts divisions in place so that we can overcome them, feeling the joy of getting closer, even if deep down we can never forget the sadness of our insurmountable differences.†   (source)
  • So do I. Ahead of them the mountain threw up its final defense -a huge slab of insurmountable granite facing that climbed into cloudy infinity.†   (source)
  • Even though Duck Commander faced difficult times and what seemed liked insurmountable obstacles, we stayed the course and never gave up.†   (source)
  • You realize, of course, the insurmountable difficulties of any sort of construction job during this period of emergency.†   (source)
  • And yet, sorting out fair and responsible use of playing fields in public parks was not among society's more insurmountable problems.†   (source)
  • Even when we faced tough times and what seemed like insurmountable odds, we persevered through our mistakes and landed on our feet again.†   (source)
  • Not an insurmountable distance.†   (source)
  • Difficulties were not insurmountable.†   (source)
  • The evidence was there vividly in the narrow red ribbon tacked across the mainland: the ground forces in Italy were pinned down forty-two insurmountable miles south of the target and could not possibly capture the city in time.†   (source)
  • He considered it a trick of his whimsical fate to have searched for the sea without finding it, at the cost of countless sacrifices and suffering, and to have found it all of a sudden without looking for it, as if it lay across his path like an insurmountable object.†   (source)
  • As a Mississippi newspaper put it: "Although slavery is one of the principles that we started to fight for …. if it proves an insurmountable obstacle to the achievement of our liberty and nationality, away with it!"†   (source)
  • After the previous few years, a border and border guards did not seem insurmountable, and yet he could not get off the train and he was too tired to think of a way to save himself, so he stopped thinking and fell asleep.†   (source)
  • I stood frozen, hearing the sound grow smaller and smaller; and then I turned,, the fear in me unraveling, growing huge and insurmountable, and I ran after her.†   (source)
  • Ahead of him, Myrtlewood drove to an insurmountable lead, with local star Professor Paul rallying in vain to catch her.†   (source)
  • However, he is young by the standards of the dwarves, and his association with us may prove to be an insurmountable barrier for the other clan chiefs.†   (source)
  • And there are great, if not insurmountable, difficulties to making a proper provision for it in a Constitution for the United States.†   (source)
  • One is that progress really is possible; challenges are insurmountable only until the moment that they're surmounted.†   (source)
  • At any moment the gunslinger expected a twist in the stream to bring them upon a high waterfall and the insurmountable smoothness of rock-dead end.†   (source)
  • But the junction suddenly seemed an insurmountable distance away: on the shore of the Mississippi, at the Taggart Bridge.†   (source)
  • Special Agent'srider planned to slip away to an insurmountable lead early in the race, while George Woolf, on Indian Broom, would lay behind Seabiscuit, hoping that Pollard's colt would wear himself out chasing Special Agent and leave him free to pounce on him late, as Rosemont had.†   (source)
  • She had cultivated Teng, sending numerous Canadians to him when problems of convenience had seemed insurmountable.†   (source)
  • It seems reasonable to return to the people to keep the branches of government within their constitutional limits, but there are some insurmountable problems.†   (source)
  • Cassie yearned-she did want to taste the cabbage-that was really the insurmountable thing, and even the brains of a pig she would have put in her mouth that day.†   (source)
  • Piedmont and I had locked horns in a furious encounter, separated by an insurmountable gap of thirty years.†   (source)
  • Has any of you ever encountered an insurmountable obstacle?†   (source)
  • She not only had the aunt to support her, but the fact that women never plead nor claim loneliness until impenetrable and insurmountable circumstance forces them to give up all hope of attaining the particular bauble which at the moment they happen to want.†   (source)
  • She knew it was not insurmountable.†   (source)
  • …house to accept and retain human life; as though houses actually possess a sentience, a personality and character acquired not from the people who breathe or have breathed in them so much as rather inherent in the wood and brick or begotten upon the wood and brick by the man or men who conceived and built them—in this one an incontrovertible affirmation for emptiness, desertion; an insurmountable resistance to occupancy save when sanctioned and protected by the ruthless and the strong.†   (source)
  • …it would be hard to say to which of them he appeared the more splendid—to the one with hope, even though unconscious, of making the image hers through possession; to the other with the knowledge, even though subconscious to the desire, of the insurmountable barrier which the similarity of gender hopelessly intervened; —this man whom Henry first saw riding perhaps through the grove at the University on one of the two horses which he kept there or perhaps crossing the campus on foot in…†   (source)
  • Shefford could not see any trail, and the wall appeared steep and insurmountable.†   (source)
  • Crawling back seemed interminable and insurmountable to Tom.†   (source)
  • The difficulties of the enterprise, in fact, are probably unsurmountable.†   (source)
    standard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unsurmountable means not and reverses the meaning of surmountable. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
  • He felt a sort of insurmountable longing to abandon the game altogether.†   (source)
  • Captain Nemo filled me with insurmountable horror.†   (source)
  • So insurmountable, as you must well know, would be his objections.†   (source)
  • But that cannot be; the human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union.†   (source)
  • They were not insurmountable; they would not hold if he really loved her; they could not hold against her own passion, which he must come to realize in time.†   (source)
  • The obstruction that opposed his will was as insurmountable as it had been physically impossible for him to climb the bluff.†   (source)
  • There was no hint of disapproval in her reserve; I merely felt in her an insurmountable reluctance to speak of him or his affairs, a low "Yes, I knew them both…. it was awful…." seeming to be the utmost concession that her distress could make to my curiosity.†   (source)
  • The insurmountable difficulty of the place, especially now it was alarmed, was to get any plunder out of it.†   (source)
  • The only insurmountable obstacle was that I had no vessel to contain the water I should need if I floated forth upon these untravelled seas.†   (source)
  • It seemed she made her way through a red dimness—that there was a congestion in her brain—that the distance to Mrs. Cass's cottage was insurmountable.†   (source)
  • It was as though there was an unsurmountable wall or impenetrable barrier between them, built by the lack of understanding—for it was just that.†   (source)
  • The huge shadow of the mountain resembled the shadow of the insurmountable barrier between Fay and him…….†   (source)
  • XIII It was all very well to join them, but speaking to them proved quite as much as ever an effort beyond my strength—offered, in close quarters, difficulties as insurmountable as before.†   (source)
  • He felt an insurmountable need for tidiness that kept him out of that realm where a reverence for human misery—as experimental youth had put it earlier—reigned, not only in a physical but also in a psychological sense, a realm where, in short, virtue, reason, and health meant nothing, but where vice and illness were held in extraordinary honor.†   (source)
  • The touch of her hand had filled him with ecstasy; he had desired to enter into her soul so that he could share every thought with her and every feeling; he had suffered acutely because, when silence had fallen between them, a remark of hers showed how far their thoughts had travelled apart, and he had rebelled against the unsurmountable wall which seemed to divide every personality from every other.†   (source)
  • If I had begun with any appetite, he would have taken it away, and I should have sat much as I did,—repelled from him by an insurmountable aversion, and gloomily looking at the cloth.†   (source)
  • So I was struggling with an insurmountable difficulty; my brain got heated, my eyes watered over that sheet of paper; its hundred and thirty-two letters seemed to flutter and fly around me like those motes of mingled light and darkness which float in the air around the head when the blood is rushing upwards with undue violence.†   (source)
  • Thus Hester Prynne, whose heart had lost its regular and healthy throb, wandered without a clue in the dark labyrinth of mind; now turned aside by an insurmountable precipice; now starting back from a deep chasm.†   (source)
  • When he found the old woman he had felt an insurmountable repulsion for her at the first glance, though he knew nothing special about her.†   (source)
  • I hadn't, no, why should I say I hadn't if I ever had, any hope that it was possible to be so blest, not after the words that passed, not even if barriers insurmountable had not been raised!†   (source)
  • Thus they fall to denying what they cannot comprehend; which leaves them but little faith for whatever is extraordinary, and an almost insurmountable distaste for whatever is supernatural.†   (source)
  • For Ned Land, as well as for every navigator before us, I knew that this was the great insurmountable obstacle.†   (source)
  • I am aware that many of my contemporaries maintain that nations are never their own masters here below, and that they necessarily obey some insurmountable and unintelligent power, arising from anterior events, from their race, or from the soil and climate of their country.†   (source)
  • Fritz proposed that we should hollow out a cave in the rock, and though the difficulties such an undertaking would present appeared almost insurmountable, I yet determined to make the attempt; we might not, I thought, hew out a cavern of sufficient size to serve as a room, but we might at least make a cellar for the more valuable and perishable of our stores.†   (source)
  • Morrel expected Villefort would be dejected; he found him as he had found him six weeks before, calm, firm, and full of that glacial politeness, that most insurmountable barrier which separates the well-bred from the vulgar man.†   (source)
  • These innumerable multitudes of ruminating beasts often form an insurmountable obstacle to the passage of the trains; thousands of them have been seen passing over the track for hours together, in compact ranks.†   (source)
  • Living the old life, she was horrified at herself, at her utter insurmountable callousness to all her own past, to things, to habits, to the people she had loved, who loved her—to her mother, who was wounded by her indifference, to her kind, tender father, till then dearer than all the world.†   (source)
  • I have sought to point out the dangers to which the principle of equality exposes the independence of man, because I firmly believe that these dangers are the most formidable, as well as the least foreseen, of all those which futurity holds in store: but I do not think that they are insurmountable.†   (source)
  • Mr. Snagsby makes another bolt, as if the bit of bread and buffer were insurmountable "—at a rag and bottle shop."†   (source)
  • But when we had ascended to an elevation of about 250 feet, we were stopped by insurmountable obstacles.†   (source)
  • For instance, if any preposterous bill were brought forward, for giving poor grubbing devils of authors a right to their own property, I should like to say, that I for one would never consent to opposing an insurmountable bar to the diffusion of literature among THE PEOPLE,—you understand?†   (source)
  • While I own the force of these objections, I must confess, at the same time, that they do not appear to me to be altogether insurmountable.†   (source)
  • Add to this, that America has all its resources within reach, whilst the European is at 4,000 miles distance from his; and that the immensity of the American continent would of itself present an insurmountable obstacle to its conquest.†   (source)
  • "Yes, better quality nor any you're like to carry; you've got nothing first-rate but brazenness, I'll be bound," said Mrs. Glegg, with a triumphant sense of her insurmountable sagacity.†   (source)
  • Yet no people in the world has made such rapid progress in trade and manufactures as the Americans: they constitute at the present day the second maritime nation in the world; and although their manufactures have to struggle with almost insurmountable natural impediments, they are not prevented from making great and daily advances.†   (source)
  • The latter method of obtaining the desired intelligence was dilatory and unsatisfactory; besides, I had an insurmountable aversion to the idea of engaging myself in my loathsome task in my father's house while in habits of familiar intercourse with those I loved.†   (source)
  • The tone of Stephen's letter, which he had read, and the actual relations of all the persons concerned, forced upon him powerfully the idea of an ultimate marriage between Stephen and Maggie as the least evil; and the impossibility of their proximity in St. Ogg's on any other supposition, until after years of separation, threw an insurmountable prospective difficulty over Maggie's stay there.†   (source)
  • I saw an insurmountable barrier placed between me and my fellow men; this barrier was sealed with the blood of William and Justine, and to reflect on the events connected with those names filled my soul with anguish.†   (source)
  • …we enjoyed the beauty of the scene, sometimes on one side of the lake, where we saw Mont Saleve, the pleasant banks of Montalegre, and at a distance, surmounting all, the beautiful Mont Blanc and the assemblage of snowy mountains that in vain endeavour to emulate her; sometimes coasting the opposite banks, we saw the mighty Jura opposing its dark side to the ambition that would quit its native country, and an almost insurmountable barrier to the invader who should wish to enslave it.†   (source)
  • Men who have once abandoned themselves to the restless and adventurous life of the hunter, feel an insurmountable disgust for the constant and regular labor which tillage requires.†   (source)
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