"Indefinable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unrecognizable dishes, the constant jargon of social eavesdroppings that Mrs. Rantoul pressed into action the moment her husband's recollections exiled her from the conversation; but above all, the indefinable enmity that seemed to well out from his hostess, and which he seemed to divine occasionally when the ready smile left her lips and she was forced to listen to things she did ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... poets, in the exquisite adaptation of their words to the tune of our own feelings and fancies, in the charm of their manner, indefinable as the sympathetic grace of woman, are everything to us without our being able to say that they are much in themselves. They rather narcotize than fortify. Wordsworth must subject our mood to his own before he admits ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... arrived at the extremest boundary of the buildings in the suburbs. Before him lay an uninterrupted prospect of smooth, shining fields, and soft, hazy, indefinable woods. At one side of him were some vineyards and cottage gardens; at the other was a solitary house, the outermost of all the abodes in his immediate vicinity. Dark and cheerless as it was, he regarded it for some time with the mechanical ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... Breton. Suppose I were to tell you my father was a working shoemaker, for example, or a working carpenter, you'd never think anything more about it; but if I were to tell you he was a grocer, or a baker, or a confectioner, or an ironmonger, you'd feel a certain indefinable class barrier set up between us two immediately and ever after. Isn't it ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... inclined to agree. Except that we're obviously dealing with superior intelligence—I'm speaking about the "people" responsible for these androids—and we have no idea how far they might have progressed in duplicating that indefinable ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... glows a light that is continued down the bridge of the nose. The eyes, of irreproachable shape, are full of brilliance, and their gaze sheds over all it illumines an infinite softness mingled with an indefinable exaltation. The mouth trembles with divine emotion and seems to quiver ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... any rate his young masters were safe, Michu felt a sharp agony in all his joints, so keen was the sense of vague, indefinable coming evil which took possession of him; but he went forward at once, and found Corentin on the stairs with a taper in ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... chair and sat down, his action being imitated by Sexton. The bar-tender came forward around the end of the bar, while the man nearest shifted his position slightly so as to look them over, conversation instantly ceasing. Something indefinable in the fellow's attitude, and steady stare, gave West a feeling of hostility, which was not dispelled by the gruff ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... from between saffron chinks, made by the scudding wrack; that the waters teemed with life, cold, slimy, preternatural things of life; that their eyes after assuming a variety of awful expressions, settled down into that dull frozen character, and their voices into that low, sepulchral, indefinable tone, which marked the Mysterious Tailor. This wretch was the Abaddon of my dreamy Pandaemonium. He was ever before me; he lent an added splendour to the day, and deepened the midnight gloom. On the heights of Bologne I saw him; far away ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... Him, but has its source in the world itself. We might reverse this proposition and say: "All that does not emanate from the Father, which you cannot trace back to His purpose in creation, is that mysterious indefinable influence or spirit which makes the world." The world, in this sense, is not primarily a thing, or a collection of people, but a spiritual influence poured out into the very ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... admirable genius." Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson thought Daudet "incomparably" the best of the present French novelists and asserted that "Kings in Exile" comes "very near to being a masterpiece." M. Jules Lemaitre tells us that Daudet "trails all hearts after him,—because he has charm, as indefinable in a work of art as in a woman's face." M. Ferdinand Brunetiere, who has scant relish for latter-day methods in literature, admits ungrudgingly that "there are certain corners of the great city and certain aspects of Parisian manners, there are some physiognomies that perhaps ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... moistened her temples quickly with Eau de Cologne. Madame Darbois supported Esperance's head, holding a little ether to her nose. As Maurice looked about the little room, as fresh, as white, as the two pots of marguerites on the mantel-shelf, an indefinable sentiment swelled up within him. Was it a kind of adoration for so much purity? Philippe Renaud had remained in the dining-room where he succeeded in keeping Adhemar, in spite of his ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... ridge-way. When they began to descend the long, straight hill, they saw plodding along in front of them an elderly man of spare stature and thoughtful gait. In his hand he carried a basket; and there was a touch of slovenliness in his attire, together with that indefinable something in his whole appearance which suggested one who was his own housekeeper, purveyor, confidant, and friend, through possessing nobody else at all in the world to act in those capacities for him. The remainder of the journey was down-hill, and guessing him to ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... fresh wind and the exertion of running had a beneficial effect upon her, both physically and mentally, for by the time she arrived at Mr. Chartres' door, the feverish flush was replaced by a healthy glow, and the strange, indefinable feeling of restlessness which had all day possessed her, seemed to have been swept away by the ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden
... down the yard toward the east entrance. Almost on the run, two men came hurrying in. Toomey grabbed Geordie's sleeve. "They sha'n't have you here, anyhow. Jump for the cab." And jump they did, all three. Moved now by some indefinable sympathy he had not felt before, Cullin urged them on, and thrust the order into Big Ben's hairy fist as it swung from the window. Ben gave one glance, his left hand grasping the lever; Toomey made a flying leap for the bell-cord; Geordie scrambled in after; hiss went ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... memory of their great men, and some temples of brick, which still subsist. It was not until after the conquest of Sicily that the Romans for the first time made use of marble for their monuments; but it is sufficient to behold places where great actions have occurred, to experience an indefinable emotion. It is to this disposition of the soul that we must attribute the religious power of pilgrimages. Celebrated countries of every kind, even when stripped of their great men and of their monuments, preserve their effect upon the imagination. What struck our sight no longer exists, but ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... of approaching evil, and they allow them to have all the influence of reality. Whether they prove true or false, they are sources to the superstitious of unhappiness. With Mrs. S. there appeared to be an indefinable impression, which might have arisen from the precarious state of her health and from the fact that the period of her fifth confinement was rapidly hastening, and it was doubtful if she could endure the trials of such an occurrence in her weak and debilitated condition. But, whatever may have ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... stupendous impression. In the ordinary monotony of that deep voice there was soon felt an indescribable charm. In saying this I only repeat what I have heard in more or less different phrase from others. There was always in his eyes (and in this as in other points he resembled Emerson) a strange indefinable suspicion of a smile, though he, like the Sage of Concord, rarely laughed. Owing to these black eyes, and his sallow complexion, his sobriquet among the students was "the royal Bengal tiger." He was not unlike Emerson as a lecturer. I heard the latter deliver his great course of lectures in London ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... grave, venerable-looking man, dressed like an ecclesiastic, standing silently before her. The form and features of the man, who was not then known to her, remained distinctly imprinted on her imagination, and she had an indefinable inspiration that he was to be in some way connected with the work for which God intended her. She related the dream to some of her friends, and three days afterwards M. de Maisonneuve arrived at Troyes. He called at the Convent, when ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... the Holy Thorn at Glastonbury; in all England there is no lovelier musing place than the leafy walk beside the Palace Moat at Wells. As I think of the golden hours I spent there, a passion to which I can give no name takes hold upon me; my heart trembles with an indefinable ecstasy. ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... disturbing query; he was conscious of the same disappointment now that he could examine her face more attentively, as in his first cursory glance. She was certainly handsome; if there was no longer the freshness of youth, there was still the indefinable charm of the woman of thirty, and with it the delicate curves of matured muliebrity and repose. There were lines, particularly around the mouth and fringed eyelids, that were deepened as by pain; and the chin, even ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... all who recollect the sale at Strawberry Hill must remember with peculiar interest, sounded well on paper. It was 56 feet long, 17 high, and 13 wide; yet was neither long enough, high enough, nor wide enough to inspire the indefinable sentiment by which we acknowledge vastness. We beheld it the scene of George Robins's triumphs—crowded to excess. Here strolled Lord John Russell; there, with heavy tread, walked Daniel O'Connell. Hallam, placid, kindly, gentle—the prince ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... he is the peacock, coloured much more splendidly than the peahen. Even when clad in comparatively sober and partly European costume, as outside the cafes of Cairo and the great cities, he exhibits this indefinable character not merely of dignity but of pomp. It can be traced even in the tarbouch, the minimum of Turkish attire worn by all the commercial classes; the thing more commonly called in England a fez. The fez is not a sort of smoking ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... himself to belong in that category. There resided in him those peculiar, indefinable qualities imperative for mastery of the air. Under able instruction he got on fast, just as he had got on fast in the Henderson shops. And by the time the first fall snows whitened the ground, he was ready for England and ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... as cognition, in the sense of definite knowledge, is here reduced to a minimum. On the other hand there is more at work than mere feeling. The soul of the music-lover moves about in a world which is at once realised and yet unrealised—his perceptions are vivid and yet indefinable. And it is important to note that the ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... in it a subtle change. In place of the fresh, pink complexion, the desert had given him a healthy coat of tan. But that, while Conniston was quick to note it, was not the change that startled him. There was an indefinable something in Hapgood's eyes, at the corners of his thin-lipped mouth, that had not been there before. Conniston wondered if the hand of this Western country had touched the inner man as it had the outer, if the new life had ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... from the Bowery, but I feel quite at home! It is delightful to feel that my country is represented in this land of beauty by so many handsome and cheerful-looking men; it is delightful to see the evidences of prosperity in every American here, and it is delightful to see that that subtle, indefinable quickening of spirit that comes from separation has given to each of you, exiles in a foreign land, a new significance in every star and stripe and every reference to the old flag and ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... Leaney arrived at Ancona on the following day, and found no Mansana there to greet her at the railway station, she was seized by a sudden indefinable apprehension. Hurrying to the telegraph-office she sent him an anxiously worded despatch, which testified to her alarm. She went home, and waited for the answer, her fears gaining ground as the minutes went by. At length a messenger arrived with the money that had been paid for the reply ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... discord begins. There is a vague fear which springs from an unknown source and drifts into the depths of rest; fear, indefinable, unaccountable, unknowable, shuddering. Pain begins, for the heart springs into life, and fills the silence with the terror of its beatings, thick, knifing, frightful in its intense longing. Power of mind over ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... and trying all schemes for several hours, in vain, to drown his remorse in sleep, at last, at daybreak, sank into an uneasy slumber. The image of Louis, and his mute expression of patient sorrow that evening, haunted him, and he felt an indefinable longing to be like him, and a horror of himself in comparison with him. He remembered Louis' words, "Pray to God;" and one murmured petition was whispered in the stillness of the night, "Lord have mercy on ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... acquaintance. It began with an exchange of cards; a form to which he evidently attached a ceremonial value, for after that piece of ritual his manner underwent a sensible softening, and he showed by many subtile indefinable shades in his courteous address, that he did me the honour of including me in his friendship. I have his card before me now; a large, oblong piece of pasteboard, with M. Maurice Cristich, Theatre Royal, inscribed upon it, amid many florid flourishes. It enabled me to form my ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... buggy, Maddy felt for a moment as if she were dying. Never until then had she realized how, all the while, she had been clinging to an indefinable hope, a presentiment that something might yet occur to spare her from a long lifetime of pain, such as lay before her if Guy were really lost; but the bubble had burst, leaving her nothing to hope, nothing to cling to, ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... atmosphere of the moon. At one time, and particularly on my first emergence from my prison, there was certainly a cold wind blowing down the shaft, and later there was a kind of sirocco upward that corresponded with my fever. For at the end of about three weeks I fell ill of an indefinable sort of fever, and in spite of sleep and the quinine tabloids that very fortunately I had brought in my pocket, I remained ill and fretting miserably, almost to the time when I was taken into the presence of the Grand Lunar, who is ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... attacked her attempted to commit a frightful crime. The medical experts who examined these traces yesterday affirm that they were made by the same hand as that which left its red imprint on the wall; an enormous hand, Monsieur, much too large to go into my gloves," he added with an indefinable smile. ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... resting on the gold and purple kings. The lashes of his closed eyelids cast a shadow on his delicate skin, with its small blue veins, through which life pulsed feebly. He was beautiful as an angel, but with the indefinable corruption of a whole race spread over his countenance. And Aunt Dide looked at him with her vacant stare in which there was neither pleasure nor pain, the stare of ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... a charge against even the mighty Honore,[272] and that, here at any rate, it has been found impossible to deny it absolutely. But if the company of the Human Comedy falls short in this respect, it is not because some of its members do "shady" things. It is because the indefinable, but to those who can perceive it unmistakable, aura of "gentility"—in the true and not the debased sense—is, at best, questionably present. This is ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... forms; also in a common or similar ground of sensibility in the lowest forms of both, a common faculty of effecting movements tending to a determinate end, traces of which pervade the vegetable kingdom,—while on the other hand, this indefinable principle, this vegetable animula vagula, blandula, graduates into the higher sensitiveness of the lower class of animals. Nor need we hesitate to recognize the fine gradations from simple sensitiveness and volition ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... from Nolan, however, that Rodney first realized how seriously Clayton's friends were taking his affair with Natalie, and that not at first from anything he said. It was an indefinable aloofness of manner, a hostility of tone. Nolan never troubled himself to be agreeable unless it suited his inclination, and apparently Terry found nothing unusual in his attitude. ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... without waiting for me to tell him, slipped into the clean shirt which Godfrey had brought, attached the collar and tied the tie, all this quite composedly and without hesitation or clumsiness. Yet I felt, in some indefinable way, that something was seriously wrong with him. His eyes were vacant and his face flabby, as though the muscles were relaxed. It gave me the feeling that ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... be exact we mention, as this particular author seems to have done, that she had an "elusive expression," or a penetrating fragrance. Or we say that she moved, the centre of an indefinable nuance. ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... huge negro, dressed in a fancy dress of scarlet, and with a high cap of the same colour on his head, came on from the side. In his hand he carried a small dog-whip, and as he cracked it all the girls stood up. Hamilton sickened as he looked at him: an indefinable feeling of horror came over him as this man stalked about the stage. He pointed with his whip to the two African girls at the end of the semicircle, and they came forward, while the rest sat down. ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... every fibre of their beings, that stirred them to pity, to hope, to fear, until the awful misery of this blighted and crawling thing was their own in its every twitch of agony—that struck them with a terror, the greater because it was indefinable, a prescience, a reaching out beyond human realm, the invoking of a supernal power—the thought of which very power, once ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... through the need which he feels of uniting himself with another individual of the same species, but who is a polar opposite to him, in order to preserve the two in a new individual. The blood rushes more vigorously; the muscular strength becomes more easily roused into activity; an indefinable impulse, a sweet melancholy takes possession of the being. This period demands a special care ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... without deviating a hair's breadth from the viewpoint of youth. A fighter and a castle builder; a sort of rough-edged Peter Pan. Till he gums soft food and hobbles with a stick because the years have warped his back and his legs, Casey Ryan will keep that indefinable, bubbling optimism of spiritual youth. So tell me all about him. I want to know who has licked, so ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... sinister face rendered more ill-favoured by hollow and hungry cheeks, deeply sunburnt, and thick black eyebrows, blacker in contrast with the perfect whiteness of his hair; roughly clothed in shabby garments, of a strange and uncouth make; and having about him an indefinable manner of depression and degradation—this, for a moment, was all he saw. But he looked again, and the face and person seemed gradually to grow less strange; to change as he looked, to subside and ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... yet strange. There was in it the indefinable hardening and ageing which seemed to Boyson to have affected the whole personality. What had happened to her? As he looked at her in the dim light there rushed upon them both the memory of those ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in that land, surely, some personal and indefinable spirit of place, which was known and loved by prophet and psalmist, and most of all by Him who spread His table on the green grass, and taught His disciples while they walked the narrow paths waist-deep in rustling wheat, ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... father returned to him touched his fine lips with a gravity too deep for his years. No man had ever said that his father had dealt unfairly with men, yet for years now his son had accumulated impressions, vague and indefinable at first, but clearer as he grew older, and the impressions had already left the faintest tracery of a line between his eyebrows. He had known his father as a hard man; he knew that the world had found ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... Castle Dare to walk about Kensington Gardens! What had become of that intense longing to see her—to hear her speak—that had made his life at home a constant torment and misery? Well, it still held possession of him; but all the same there was this indefinable dread that held him back. Perhaps he was afraid that he would have to confess to her the true reason for his having come to London. Perhaps he feared he might find her something entirely different from the creature of his dreams. At all events as he returned to his room and sat down ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... thing about rooms. There was no change in the bedroom apparent to the eye, save that for Marie's tiny slippers at the foot of the wardrobe there were Mrs. Boyer's substantial house shoes. But in some indefinable way the room had changed. About it hung an atmosphere of solid respectability, of impeccable purity that soothed Mrs. Boyer's ruffled virtue into peace. Is it any wonder that there is a theory to the effect that things ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... portrait is drawn in all the contemporary memoirs, especially in those written by a woman, and that is Madame Duchtel. Madame Duchtel would not serve as a model for a sculptor, because her features lack the regularity which his art requires. The indefinable charm of her face, a charm which words are unable to convey, lay in dark blue eyes, with long, silken, lashes, in a delicate, gracious, refined smile, which, disclosed teeth of ivory whiteness, and, moreover, beautiful light ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... is what we are all after," replied the clergyman. But there was an indefinable something in his voice that indicated a ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... admirable are their vastness and solidity—each arch in itself a fabric, and the whole so venerable and beautiful. After all my delight at Naples I infinitely prefer Rome; there is a tranquil magnificence and repose about Rome, and an indefinable pleasure in the atmosphere, the colouring, and the ruins, which are better felt than described. We lingered about the aqueducts till dark, but there is hardly any twilight here; the sun sets, and in half an hour it is night. Almost everybody is gone or going, but ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... road behind the levee. Turning southward, we soon left behind the shaded esplanade and the city's roofs below us, and came to the first of the plantation houses set back amidst the dark foliage. No tremor shook the fringe of moss that hung from the heavy boughs, so still was the day, and an indefinable, milky haze stretched between us and the cloudless sky above. The sun's rays pierced it and gathered fire; the mighty river beside us rolled listless and sullen, flinging back the heat defiantly. And on our left was a tropical forest in all its bewildering luxuriance, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... stars gleamed like drops of water. He felt unsettled, ill at ease; dissatisfaction irked his thoughts and emotions. His unrest was without tangible features; it permeated him from an undivined cause, oppressed him with indefinable longing. He got, he dimly realized, but a limited amount of satisfaction from the money now at his command. He was totally without financial instinct—money for itself, the abstraction, was beyond his comprehension. He had bought a ponderous gold watch, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... clear. Her pretty brown hair had perhaps lost a little of the golden tinge of its youth, but it was still soft and abundant. But the reason why people often turned to look at her did not lie in any measure of grace and beauty that she possessed, so much as in an indefinable air of distinction and refinement which seemed to pervade her whole being, and marked her off from the rest of the world as one made of ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... carefully tended, so great with memories of the past. And he thought of London. There was a subtle beauty in its hurrying crowds, and there was beauty in the thronged traffic of its river: the streets had that indefinable hue which is the colour of London, and the sky had the gold and the purple of an Italian brocade. Now in Piccadilly Circus, around the fountain sat the women who sold flowers; and the gaiety of their baskets, rich with roses and daffodils and tulips, yellow ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... spoke no more. The old-time rake felt his instincts of libertinism aroused by the perfume exhaled by this woman, an indefinable perfume of flesh fresh and virginal, which he thought he inhaled, like a connoisseur, more with the imagination than through sense of smell. At the same time—a strange thing for him!—he experienced ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... much of the life of the whites as she had found in the Indian schools. Colonel Kate pitied her and determined to help her. She was saying to herself that the girl was certainly intelligent and attractive, when she suddenly realized that this Indian maid was gifted with that indefinable but most potent of feminine attractions—personal charm. And then, like an inspiration, the idea took possession of her mind. She turned ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... dressing-room, and closed the door with an air of secrecy which showed her expectation of giving or receiving intelligence of importance, and there was in her countenance an expression which combined both joy and sorrow, and was really indefinable. ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... pockets, began to whistle and returned to his own doorstep with an air of profound unconcern. There for a time, to the tune of "Men of Harlech," he contemplated the receding possibility of kicking Mr. Rumbold hard. It would be splendid—and for the moment satisfying. But he decided not to do it. For indefinable reasons he could not do it. He went indoors and straightened up his dress ties very slowly and thoughtfully. Presently he went to the window and regarded Mr. Rumbold obliquely. Mr. Rumbold was ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... an admirable thing chance is!" D'Artagnan pronounced these words with an indefinable tone of feigned bonhomie, for he knew very well that the victim of pirates was an old corsair, and had engaged him in consequence of that knowledge. But D'Artagnan never said more than there was need to say, in order to leave people in doubt. He paid himself with the explanation, and ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was, the stout handle of a hunting knife. The same chill swept through Hervey a second time and, for a moment, he wavered in his determination. Then, with all his heart, he envied that indefinable thing in the eyes of Perris, the thing which he had hated all his life. Some horses had it, creatures with high heads, and always he had made it a point to take that ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... lamp with an orange shade on a table covered by a black satin cloth. There were heavily gleaming oil paintings on the walls, a heavy old brass chandelier without candles, heavy dark red curtains, and an indefinable scent of burnt acorns, coffee, cigars, and old man. He became conscious of a candescent spot on the far side of the hearth, where the light fell on ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Daisy played in all these childhood enjoyments of mine is hardly to be described in words, much less portrayed in incidents. I can recall next to nothing to relate. Her presence as my sister, my comrade, and my pupil seems only an indefinable part of the sunshine which gilds these old memories. We were ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... revere. Had such a character as we have endeavoured feebly to sketch, met an individual enveloped in a shapeless cylindrical tube of pale Macintosh—impossible for taste—incapable of pockets—indefinite and indefinable—we question whether he would have regarded him in the light of a maniac, an incendiary, or a foreign spy—whether he would not have handed him immediately over to the exterminators of the law, as a being too depraved, too degraded for human sympathy. And yet—for our prolixity warns us to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... their good neighbour Davidson; but, pressing as was his own farm-work, he found time to spend another hour at Daisy Burn, doing up some garden beds under direction of Miss Edith. She had come to look on him as a very good friend; and he——well, there was some indefinable charm of manner about the young lady. Those peculiarly set grey eyes were so truthful and so gentle, that low musical voice so perfect in tone and inflection, that Robert was pleased to look or listen, as the case might be. But chiefest reason of all—was she not ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... try and, in this, as in so many things, starve within an inch of plenty." And as to the mien and manner which will develop from firm commitments, another wise Frenchman, Honore Balzac, added this: "Conviction brings a silent, indefinable beauty into faces made of the commonest human clay." Here is a great part of the secret. It is in the exercise of the will that the men are separated from the boys, and that the officer who is merely anxious for advancement ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... as she lay comforting herself, and the morning wore on, she became increasingly conscious of an indefinable uncomfortable sensation. And presently the sensation became more definite; became localized; and she was aware that she was growing hungry. And in the same moment came the dismaying realization that, in their haste of the night before, she had not thought to ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... next morning she was conscious of a curious feeling; an indefinable presentiment that she could not put into words. "How I wish the day were over," she said to herself; and the thought of her visit to Galvaston House, and Mr. Gaythorne's sharp, cynical speeches, quite ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... that greeted the mourner as he wandered listlessly from room to room apparently looking for some object, some vague uncertainty, something indefinable. ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... continued, "but lately, since we have loved each other, I can not bear to see a woman near you. In my dreams again and again an indefinable shadow mockingly comes; and cries to me, 'he is not to be yours, he is to ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... but her manner was constrained. She could not banish the remembrance of her call upon his mother, of the contrast between his home and hers; and as he talked something indefinable in his language, in his very movements and gestures, revealed to her sensitive nature a contrast, a difference, between them; he had somehow reached ground to which she could not attain. He drew her out to speak of her new studies and ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... selfishness; but when he came to leave that mother, that old homestead, and all the bright and beautiful objects around it, a softness breathed over his iron-nature, and the fount of tears sent up its gushing libations. I have often thought that such feelings must be akin to those mysterious, indefinable, and gloomy forebodings—those dim and indescribable fears and shrinkings within self, that sometimes come over our spirits like a creeping, icy thrill—in the midst of a giddy round of pleasure, or, as we stand by the grave's brink ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... when these trees catch," returned the sheriff grimly. "No." Even as he spoke, a dropping rain of fire spattered through the leaves from a splintered redwood, before overlooked, that was now blazing fiercely in the upper wind. A vague and indefinable terror was in the air. The conflagration no longer seemed to obey any rule of direction. The incendiary torch had passed invisibly everywhere. They scrambled out of the hollow, ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... had been rewarded with a presentation bat bearing a silver shield on the back of it. No boy in the house, so Mr. Dupre said, grudged the sixpence which had been stopped from his pocket money to pay for the bat. Then, passing to graver matters, Mr. Dupre spoke warmly of the tone of the house, that indefinable quality which in the eyes of a faithful schoolmaster is more precious than rubies. It was Mannix, prefect and member of the lower sixth, who more than any one else deserved credit for the fact that Edmonstone stood second to no house in the school in the matter of ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... way. She lay curled in her seat, a wretched, disconsolate little heap, when a brown-bearded man, muffled in furs, entered, flashing the light of his lantern here and there, eagerly scrutinizing the faces. He paused at Ruey's seat, an indefinable something attracting him, though the face was covered by two hands. Suddenly she looked up, and there were Philip's dear eyes gazing into hers. No questions were asked or answered just then. She was gathered in his arms for an instant; then he wrapped her in blankets, brought food, and nursed ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... health failed I should be sent away from Venice and Luigi. He had given me a drawing—a scene composed from our first meeting upon the Lagune. The very soul of evening repose brooded upon the picture. It had even an indefinable tone of sadness, as if he had incorporated into it the sound of the vesper bell. It had been simply a melancholy sound to him. To the rest of us, who loved Camillo, it was something more than that. In his heart the mere remembrance of the ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... good it would be to know where to seek for help in this life, and what to expect after it beyond the grave! How happy and calm I should be if I could now say: 'Lord, have mercy on me!'... But to whom should I say that? Either to a Power indefinable, incomprehensible, which I not only cannot address but which I cannot even express in words—the Great All or Nothing-" said he to himself, "or to that God who has been sewn into this amulet by Mary! ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Watson confidently knocked, and which was opened by a negro who let us in as soon as he saw the reporter. The air was sickening with an odor which I then perceived for the first time, and which Watson called the dope smell. There was an indefinable horror about the place, which so repelled me that nothing but my obligation could have held me there. The lights were dim, and at first I could see nothing more than that the sides of the room were divided into ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... right now, from what I have already heard of it," returned Stevens, who had almost at first sight succumbed to that indefinable personal appeal which caused Sam Turner to be trusted of all men. "I shall be very glad to hear more about it. It struck me when you spoke of it yesterday ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... nothing; and yet to be among the first in any kind of writing, as Dryden certainly was, is to be one of a very small company. He had, beyond most, the gift of the right word. And if he does not, like one or two of the greater masters of song, stir our sympathies by that indefinable aroma so magical in arousing the subtile associations of the soul, he has this in common with the few great writers, that the winged seeds of his thought embed themselves in the memory and germinate there. If I could be guilty of the absurdity of recommending to a young man any author on whom to ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... us to form the habit of looking intensely at words. We should scrutinize them closely and endeavor to grasp their innermost meaning. There is an indefinable satisfaction in knowing how to choose and use words with accuracy and precision. As Fox once said, "I am never at a loss for a word, but ...
— Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases • Grenville Kleiser
... had then no name. The feelings were vague and indefinable, but not the less unpleasant. I did not fancy for a moment that I was wronged, or likely to be wronged, but I felt that he was doing wrong. Then, too, I had my misgivings of what the world would think! I did not fancy that he had any design to wrong me; but there seemed to me ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... doubtless a similar cheerful gathering beneath the shaded electric lights. Musing thus, glancing from face to face, and listening, half uncomprehending, to the laughing jargon, he glimpsed for an instant the indefinable Spirit of the Fleet. Each of these communities, separated by steel and darkness from the other, shared it. It stretched back into a past of unforgotten memories, linking one and all in a brotherhood that compassed the waters of the earth, ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... had come so near he did not have the strength to finish. Her face, with its indefinable charm, was raised to his, as she dropped these words one by one from her lips in lingering cadence: "Frederick—do you love me, then, so ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... imaginary other person the psychic vibrations, accompanied by the mental picture suitable for it. Act the part out seriously and earnestly, just as if the reflected image were really another person. This will give you confidence in yourself, and that indefinable "knack" of handling your psychic weapons that comes only from practice. You will do well to perfect yourself in these rehearsals, just as you would in case you were trying to master anything else. By frequent earnest rehearsals, you will gain not only familiarity with ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... head in solemn assent; but Molly, watching with the most acute attention, felt her face blaze at the indefinable shade of mockery she thought to catch upon ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... had turned its black crepe countenance towards the sky, and was waving its arms in time to a religious chant. "Look at him now," cried a little boy. They turned, and were transfixed by the solemnity and mystery of the indefinable gestures. The wail of the melody was mournful and slow. They drew back. It seemed to spellbind them with the power of a funeral. They were so absorbed that they did not hear the doctor's buggy drive up to the stable. Trescott got out, tied his horse, ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... exhibition of human infirmities, now unconsciously stopped, with an interest in the man that she could not controul, and thus compelled Maria to pause also. The crowd had withdrawn from the man, giving him sufficient room to roll over, in evident pain, while they yet stood gazing at him, with that indefinable feeling of curiosity and nerveless sympathy, which characterises man when not called on to act, by emulation, vanity, or the practice of well-doing. No one offered to assist the sufferer, although many said it ought to be done; some spoke ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... broken spirit that we need—a spirit keeping no rights before God or man, longing to go down, down, anywhere, if other souls may be blessed. It is an indefinable thing, this brokenness, and yet it is as unmistakable when it has been wrought, as that of the ...
— Parables of the Christ-life • I. Lilias Trotter
... of things, gives a distinct definition to that mysteriousness by ascribing to it the right to claim from us the particular mood called seriousness,—which means the willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain. The same is true of him who says that all is vanity. For indefinable as the predicate 'vanity' may be in se, it is clearly something that permits anaesthesia, mere escape from suffering, to be our rule of life. There can be no greater incongruity than for a disciple of Spencer to proclaim with ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... acquaintances, yet how many of us can so accurately describe those qualities to a stranger that he also may be able to identify the voices among a thousand others. The tabulation of such elusive qualities would have to be in very general terms. Such indefinable characteristics would, to some extent, have to depend for comparison upon the memory of those workers who had received first-hand impressions. It would be something like a present-day musician identifying an unfamiliar composition as belonging to the "French school," the "Italian ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... which had threatened to languish. The old man did not relish the questions about his son, and began deploring the poor crops. At this juncture an indefinable feeling that we were losing time in stopping at this lonely place came over me. I am not superstitious, but I swear that I felt ill at ease and confused ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... beneath the surface, as you might say, and works there. But I do know that where there is an element of strife among the men, there you will find him as peacemaker—he has a wonderful way with them, but it is indefinable. We don't know all he does, for he never speaks of it, only every once in a while something leaks out. I know that where there is a sickbed and a quarryman on it, there you will find Champney Googe ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... "Indefinable fears, and a desire to monopolize all the meditations and affections of this being, had induced me to perpetuate her ignorance of any but her native language, and debar her from all intercourse with the world. My friends were of course inquisitive respecting her character, adventures, and particularly ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... sandpits and beyond them tossed the vivid white and blue of the Lake. Then when his interest had detached itself from the predominant note of the imminent wilderness, predominant less from its physical size—for it lay in remote perspective—than from a certain indefinable and psychological right of priority, Bob's eye was at once drawn to the huge red-painted sawmill, with its very tall smokestacks, its row of water barrels along the ridge, its uncouth and separate conical sawdust ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... powers represented by Nayland Smith pitted against him, pursued his dark schemes triumphantly, and lurked in hiding within this very area which was so sedulously patrolled—Fu-Manchu, whom I had never seen, but whose name stood for horrors indefinable! Perhaps I was destined to meet ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... head. She was certainly pretty, with that proud virginal beauty which often bears itself on the defensive, in our modern world where a certain superfluity of women has not tended to chivalry. But how little prettiness matters, beside the other thing!—the indefinable, irresistible something—which gives the sceptre and the crown! All the time she was listening to Mrs. Penfold's chatter, and the daughter's occasional words, Victoria Tatham was on the watch for this something; and not without ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her? The vicar perceived something indefinable; and before they had walked half the distance to the road he had forgotten his own grievance. She looked ill. Janet Leighton, meeting him in the village a few days before, had talked of her partner as "done up." Was it the excitement of ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... courteous, she effectually concealed her face; so that, even if there had been a change in its expression, it could not have been seen. Yet, after all, the triumph was but instantaneous. It passed away, and soon there came another feeling, vague, indefinable—a premonition of the future—a presentiment of gloom; and though the intensity of the suspense had passed, there still remained a dark anxiety and a fear ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... her face there passed an expression half startled, half shrinking, as of one who speaks familiarly, as he supposes, to an old friend and finds a stranger. She could not take her eyes off him. What was this new dignity, this indefinable change ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his embrace, for a moment her head fell back on his broad shoulder, and she smiled up at him. From her soft, yielding form arose that subtle, familiar perfume, the intoxicating, vague, indefinable aroma of the well groomed woman that never fails to set a man's blood on fire. Bending low until his mouth touched hers, he kissed her until her face glowed under the ardor of his amative caress. But to-day she was not in ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... the door. I caught but a glimpse of her face. There was in it, and particularly in her eyes,—which, perhaps, on account of her dramatic cultivation, had the faculty of concentrating in a wonderful manner the most powerful as well as the most indefinable expressions,—a peculiar light, which then I did not understand, but afterwards, oh, too well. Fool, fool, that I was, after all my anxious scrutiny of her moods through two years of intensest agony, not to understand this one. The alchemist, who wasted his ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that she failed to ride the waves with even keel, it was not that her rigging was in disarray, nor that her sails were disordered. Her distance was too great to make out such details. But in precisely the same manner as a trained physician glances at a doomed patient, and from that indefinable look in the face of him and the eyes of him pronounces the verdict "death," so Kitchell took in the stranger with a single comprehensive glance, ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... pleased behind its shelter; and he likewise carefully selected the seven of his crew whom he sent on board to work the ship, the chief being a heavy-looking old Turk, with a chocolate-coloured visage between a huge white beard and eyebrows, and the others mere lads, except one, who, from an indefinable European air about him, was evidently a renegade, and could speak a sort of French, so as to hold communication with the captives, especially Lanty, who was much quicker than any of the rest in picking up languages, ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tall, largely built, with massive head, dark hair beginning to turn grey, sanguine, embrowned complexion, very dark eyes, fine, soft, yet penetrating. 'Quel bel homme! quel homme magnifique!' the French would exclaim in talking of him. In his features might be remarked that indefinable expression which belongs to the practised advocate. He had an exceedingly winning smile, an harmonious voice, and deliberate utterance. His manners, I need hardly say, showed all that simplicity and perfection of good breeding which ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... agree with Erasmus, that "it is a foolish error to believe that happiness is dependent upon things; it is dependent entirely upon one's opinion of them." The indefinite has no terrors for them, they delight indeed in the indefinable. They have done little in great sculpture and architecture, or the founding and ruling of colonies, as compared with their supreme achievements in music, in philosophy, in ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier |
