"Indescribable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is gusty and rainy, but no cheerlessness without can repress a sort of exuberant buoyancy of spirit which is supplied to me from within. There is such an indescribable blessedness in looking forward to a manner of life which the heart and conscience approve, and which at the same time satisfies the instinct for the heroic and beautiful. Yet there seems little enough in a homely life in a New Zealand forest; and indeed there is nothing ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... none of us sorry to exchange our saddles for our berths in the Camoens, having been on horseback the greater part of the day, on a road the roughness of which is indescribable. ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... with him—tears of pity and of rage at all this spectacle implied. On a day of indescribable glory, when earth and heaven shed benedictions upon the soul of man, a child, whose nature would have bidden him rejoice as only childhood may, wept his heart out because his hand had dropped a sixpenny piece! The loss was a very serious one, and he knew it; ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... understand or tolerate those who, perceiving an object to be good, did not at once and actively pursue it; and with all this energy he joined a corresponding warmth and, so to speak, eagerness of affection, a keen appreciation of humour, in which he found a rest, and an indescribable frankness and simplicity of character, which, crowning his other qualities, made him, I think (and I strive to think impartially), nearly or quite the most interesting old man I have ever known. Nearly half a century of years separated the two; but your father, I think, appreciated mine ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... forward, while Ligurius shaded his eyes with his hand and viewed the spectacle like a general counting the power of his approaching foe. Even at this distance they saw, or began to imagine they saw, some indescribable change,—not a flurry of motion or excitement,—they were too far away to note that, had such been present. It was as though above, around every tower and battlement hung an atmosphere of hostility and defiance; yet this was the friend of Rome through days of weal and days of woe,—the second ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... there were civilities, and the young men were receding. By a great effort she controlled herself to face the enquiring eyes of her friends. All that afternoon she lived the life of a heroine under the indescribable outrage of that name, chatting, observing, with "Snooks" gnawing at her heart. From the moment that it first rang upon her ears, the dream of her happiness was prostrate in the dust. All the refinement she had figured ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... were called, resolved to anticipate the approaching struggle by a massacre of the most influential Christians. This atrocious massacre was carried out with indescribable horrors. In the dead of the night a party of Dahis Cavasses would surround a house, drive open gates and doors with sledge-hammers; the awakened and affrighted inmates would rush to the windows, and seeing the court-yard filled with armed men with dark lanterns, the shrieks of women and children ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... must always be recalled by me as days of unalloyed enjoyment; I felt an indescribable calm steal, as it were, over my spirit. Generally active, impatient, and inquiring, I have seldom found any neighbourhood which I did not compass in a few days; but from the vicinity of this spot I had no desire to stir. Finding ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... one or more joints and fever. The knees, ankles, elbows and wrists are much affected, but it frequently goes through almost every joint in the body and sometimes repeats the terrible dose. I know, for I had it twice. The suffering, torture and pain sometimes are simply indescribable and almost too hard to bear. The joints become hot, red, painful, swollen and tender to touch and motion. It seems to hurt worse when anyone comes near, for the patient is afraid of ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... shook her head, swaying the beautiful blond curls, full of heather, with a touching gesture. This plaintive expression of grievous doubts and hidden sorrows is indescribable. Daniel understood them all; and he looked at the princess with ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... kind Nature draws a veil for him over so much of all the worst of it that many details are spared his later recollection. He remembers only the indescribable confusion and the bursting claps of near-by flame, as foul in color and as ill of smell as an addled egg. He knows only that the acid of the high-explosive gas eats into the tissue of his brain and ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... Vooda's measure accurately. He knew the Constable to have a persuasive tongue, to be honest, loyal, and discreet, and, above all, to possess that nameless and almost indescribable quality of imparting trustfulness in those with ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... portentous and far encroaching, to not only the moral life but the very civilization of the higher types of the human family, so debasing and blighting were its effects on those who came into even tolerating contact with its details. The indescribable atrocities practised on the slaves, the deplorable sapping of even respectable principles in owners of both sexes—all these stood forth in their ineffable hideousness before the uncorrupted gaze of the moral heroes, sons of Britain and America, and also of other countries, who, buckling on the ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... last time I saw Mr. Motley was, I believe, about two months before his death, March 28, 1877. There was no great change in his health, but he complained of indescribable sensations in his nervous system, and felt as if losing the whole power of walking, but this was not obvious in his gait, although he walked shorter distances than before. I heard no more of him until I was suddenly summoned on the 29th of May into Devonshire to see him. The telegram ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... them was so upset that his stomach rebelled; yet, after a few minutes, with a courage and determination worthy only of such a cause, they went back into the building and passed a more or less sleepless night, in the midst of indescribable ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... undertaken to bake, and that we were all the unfortunate pigeons destined to be stewed therein. "Then," said the matter-of-fact little Winny, "we must put all our feet together, and stick them up in the middle." One day, when we happened to be in that indescribable state—a sort of half consciousness of what was passing around—scarcely knowing whether we were dreaming or waking, we heard a knock at the door, and the hot but smiling face of our captain shewed itself. He was immediately ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... you better than I did," poor Arthur groaned forth, with an indescribable pang at his heart. "I am but a selfish wretch, and George is better, nobler, truer, than I am. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... some—seem to stoop nearer and nearer to the earth as slumber deepens, as if to press golden kisses upon the eyelids of those whom they watch and love! In all countries these hours are beautiful; but in Egypt—let those who doubt come and witness all that we beheld, and which is indescribable, on the evening that we left the neighbourhood of Silsilis on our way to Edfou—on that calm, placid river, over which brooded a silence interrupted only by the alternate songs of the crews of the two boats as they leisurely ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... wood. Up to a point everything happened as before. As the monotonous church clock struck twelve, from afar came the sound of hoofs. Nearer, nearer, nearer, and then with startling abruptness the rider shot into view. And now, mixed with the awful, indescribable terror the figure always conveyed with it, came a feeling of intense rage and indignation. Should Beryl—Beryl whom I loved next best to my wife—be torn from me even as Dick and Hal had been? No! Ten thousand times no! Sooner than that ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... regalis, royal, indeed, in its type of queenly beauty. The wine-colored stipes of the uncoiling fronds shooting up in early spring, lifting gracefully their pink pinnae and pretty panicles of bright green spore cases, throw an indescribable charm over the meadows and clothe even the wet, stagnant swamps with beauty nor is the attraction less when the showy fronds expand in summer and the green sporangia are turned to brown. The stout rootstocks are often erect, rising several ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... them, a spare thin man, with a little bronze crucifix in his hand, paused as he saw the hearse drawn up, clasped his hands in prayer, and then lifted them in benediction of him who lay within. I saw his face, and there was in it an indescribable heavenly sweetness and pity which made me say to my brother: 'I must go and ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... terror again got hold of me and so firmly that I lost my head, and though the pulpit was on the right, as I very well knew, I sought it on the left, and entangling myself among the benches I was completely lost. Unable to find either pulpit or door, I fell into an indescribable state of mind. At last I found the door and managed to get out of the church and run away as I had done before, quite determined never to enter the church again except ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... asked me who I was. Now I had determined to conceal my name until I met Sir George; and the first name that rose to my lips was that of the Senora Mendizabal. At the word, there went a shock about the little party of seamen; the negroes stared at me with indescribable eagerness, the whites themselves with something of a scared surprise; and instantly the spirit of mischief prompted me to add: "And if the name is new to your ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... English, who offered no hindrance whatever," as she had predicted. The little party made their way along the bank, and in the twilight of the April evening, about eight o'clock, entered Orleans. The Deliverer, it need not be said, was hailed with joy indescribable. She was on a white horse, and carried, Dunois says, the banner in her hand, though it was carried before her when she entered the town. The white figure in the midst of those darkly gleaming mailed men, would in itself throw a certain glory through the dimness of the night, as she passed ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... chip and serve raw. Frizzling is possible but a waste of God's good mercies. Properly cured meat is salt but not too salt, of a deep blackish-red, and when sliced thin, partly translucent, also of an indescribable savoriness. Cut as nearly as possible, across the grain. Do not undertake to make beef hams save in the late fall, so there may be cold weather for the curing. The meat must be chilled through before salt touches ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... witnesses of this usually unheeded part of the funeral duties: accident had given to us a privilege which was lost to the crowd within. We instinctively uncovered our heads, and stood subdued by an indescribable feeling of awe as the corpse was carried outwards; and we felt grateful, that it had thus fallen to our lot to behold the departure of these the honoured and precious remains of Sir Walter Scott from the house of Abbotsford, where all his earthly affections had been centered. The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... and a shiver crept through her stately form; then she slowly continued, in a tone of indescribable pathos,— ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... Mrs Dashwood pursue her work. Neat little under-garments, and fairy-like little socks, and indescribable little articles of Lilliputian clothing of various kinds, all telling of the little rosebud in the crib, passed rapidly through Mary's nimble fingers, and came out of the tub fair as the driven snow. ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... on the stile and hated the whole scheme of life—which was at once excessive and inadequate as a solution. He hated Foxbourne, he hated Foxbourne High Street, he hated his shop and his wife and his neighbours—every blessed neighbour—and with indescribable bitterness he hated himself. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... we traveled, and in the late afternoon passed through a very dirty Chinese town in a deep valley near some extensive salt wells. Red clay dust lay thick over everything and the filth of the streets and houses was indescribable. We camped in a cornfield a mile beyond the village, but were greatly annoyed by the Chinese who insisted on swarming into camp. Finally, unable longer to endure their insolent stares, I drove them with stones to the top of the hill, where they sat in row upon row exactly ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... sacrilege, for such he felt it, to tear the portrait of his ancestor from his native walls. He paused and listened:—"There was no voice, nor any that answered;"—but as the wrinkled and torn canvas fell to the floor, its undulations gave the portrait the appearance of smiling. Melmoth felt horror indescribable at this transient and imaginary resuscitation of the figure. He caught it up, rushed into the next room, tore, cut, and hacked it in every direction, and eagerly watched the fragments that burned like tinder in the turf ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... an indescribable contortion of his figure, charitably supposed to be intended for ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... the best-known and most respected generals had been guilty of the grossest acts of cruelty and barbarity. Incitement to civil war (2nd and 26th of April and 14th and 24th of May) followed, as did also the oft-repeated accusation against the Government of wishing to reduce Paris by famine; indescribable calumnies directed against the Chief of the Executive Power (2nd, 16th, 20th, and 30th of April, and 8th of May), against the minister, the Chambers (16th of April and 14th of May), and the generals (12th, 16th, and 26th of April). ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... do you turn red? Why look so confused? Why try to take the book away from me? Oh, my God, it is true! it is true!" He dropped the volume, sank back upon a chair, and regarded her with indescribable grief. ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... passing boat excites them to terrible fury. Baker relates being roused one clear moonlight night by a hoarse wild snorting, which he at once recognized as the voice of a furious hippopotamus. He rushed on deck, and discovered a large specimen of this beast charging on the boat with indescribable rage. The small boats towed astern were crunched to pieces in a moment, and so rapid were the movements of this animal, as it roared and plunged in a cloud of foam and wave, that it was next to impossible to take aim at the small vulnerable spot on its head. At length, however, it ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... with an expression of indescribable amazement. "How!" said he; "you are nineteen, and assert that you have never embraced a woman?" He gave ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... cowardice and meanness very legibly written by the hand of God. His conversation was lively and easy; his manners remarkably good for a country lawyer. Women of rank and wit said that he was the only man who, on his first arrival from a remote province, had that indescribable air which it was supposed that Paris alone could give. His eloquence, indeed, was by no means so much admired in the capital as it had been by the ingenious academicians of Montauban and Toulouse. His ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... every moment, while the lake for long remained "one burnished sheet of living gold," and Truckee lay utterly out of sight in a hollow filled with lake and cobalt. Before long a carnival of color began which I can only describe as delirious, intoxicating, a hardly bearable joy, a tender anguish, an indescribable yearning, an unearthly music, rich in love and worship. It lasted considerably more than an hour, and though the road was growing very dark, and the train which was to take me thence was fast climbing the Sierras, I could not ride ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... vines and other prehensile plants, which annoyed us greatly, and made me regret a thousand times that I had courted such dangers and inconveniences, the sound of two rifle-shots threw the whole party into indescribable commotion. Supposing we were attacked, all hands flew as quick as thought to the trees around, where each one, peeping from behind the trunks which were sought as a shelter against the rifle-balls of the expected foe, waited for a ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... tower who dared utter a derisive word, however much he might have felt inclined to do so. But when the Stars and Bars were bent on to the halliards and run up to the masthead, the yells of its supporters were almost deafening and their antics quite indescribable. There was an abundance of enthusiasm about that time. There wasn't quite so much one short year later, when some of those same boys learned, to their great disgust and rage, that the Confederate Congress had passed a sweeping conscription law, and that their one year's enlistment ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... stirring appeal, uttered with indescribable energy and passion, though only in a whisper, Nathan's countenance changed from dark to pale, and his arm trembled in the soldier's grasp. He turned upon him also a look of extraordinary wildness, and muttered ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... contributed to the corruption or purification of morals. All at once I felt my mind dazzled by a thousand lights, crowds of ideas presented themselves at once with a force and a confusion which threw me into indescribable bewilderment; I felt my head seized with a giddiness like intoxication, a violent palpitation came over me, my bosom began to heave. Unable to breathe any longer as I walked, I flung myself down under one of the trees in the avenue, and there spent half an hour in such ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... been preserved, by the following exclamation: "Approach, O man, the place of thy destination—compose thy perturbed spirits, and let all thy senses be awakened to a proper understanding of the scene which thou art about to behold." So saying, he moved along with an indescribable velocity; and while my eyes were dazzled by an unusual effulgence of light, I found myself at rest upon a solid seat—formed of crystal, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... minutes to twelve the door-bell rang, and a look overspread the lady's face that was neither maternal, sisterly, nor amorous; but partook in an indescribable manner of all three kinds. The door was flung open and the young man was ushered in, the fog still clinging to his hair, in which she could discern a little notch where she ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... unexpectedly, and led the way along the military road in her front. Though this sudden and startling movement of the Indian produced no sound from the other, in the surprise her veil also was allowed to open its folds, and betrayed an indescribable look of pity, admiration, and horror, as her dark eye followed the easy motions of the savage. The tresses of this lady were shining and black, like the plumage of the raven. Her complexion was not brown, but it rather appeared charged with the color of the rich blood, that seemed ready to burst ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... along the slope from the east to the top of Sybil Head, where one comes out suddenly on the brow of a cliff with a straight fall of many hundred feet into the sea. It is a place of indescribable grandeur, where one can see Carrantuohill and the Skelligs and Loop Head and the full sweep of the Atlantic, and, over all, the wonderfully tender and searching light that is seen only in Kerry. ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... steam, of processes so slow and so exhausting to the human as well as to the animal frame—and in this feeling we are confident every planter deeply sympathises. Moreover, the relief they have afforded in other respects has been perfectly indescribable. Previous to these improvements all the finer portions of the winter were appropriated exclusively to the milling and the threshing of the crop with the flail, yet it is manifest they added not one particle to the value of the property; indeed, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... witnessed its decomposition himself. Eight days passed by without the woman giving the slightest sign of life, "when, at a moment when he was holding her hand and shedding tears over her, the church bell began to ring, and, to his indescribable surprise, his wife sat up and said, 'It is the last stroke, we shall be too ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... high ridge just in time to see the sun rise, and it lit up the snow-clad mountain-tops with an indescribable beauty. But so much has been written about the splendours of Alpine sunrises that it is needless to say more about it. Yet it was as beautiful as anything to be seen in Switzerland or the Tyrol. The ridge commanded a view ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... without any particular reason? This theory of the secrecy of political money must also be regretfully abandoned; and with it the two other possible excuses as well. This secrecy is one which cannot be justified as a sensational joke nor as a common human freemasonry, nor as an indescribable personal whim. Strangely enough, indeed, it violates all three conditions and classes at once. It is not hidden in order to be revealed: it is hidden in order to be hidden. It is not kept secret because it is a common secret of mankind, but because mankind must not get hold of ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... too well versed in human nature, to be surprised at hearing that I, so long invulnerable, have at last formed a devoted attachment to one whose beauty, goodness, and accomplishments I will not now enlarge upon; they are indescribable, and you will very soon see them and judge for yourself. The attachment, though short in weeks and months, has been a very long one in hopes, and fears, and devotion. I should have told you of it before you left, but in ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... without commingling, making the theory of them as a matter of fact, but not by a lying imagination and vain combinations of the mind; but in nowise separating them, since now the division into two has been destroyed on account of the indescribable and incomprehensible union; saying with the holy Athanasius, for there is now flesh and again the flesh of God the Word, now flesh animated and intelligent, and again the flesh of the animated and intelligent God the Word; but should under such ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... the indescribable sounds of breakfast; the rattling of knives and forks, and cups and saucers, suggestive to Mr. Hardesty's mind of coffee, hot biscuits, and butter. Presently the table was cleared away, and he caught a glimpse through his key-hole of the two ladies, dressed in their cloaks and bonnets. In a ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... straps reaching up the leg; their heads were bare, and their hair, which was a dark brown, was loose and flowing. I could not clearly distinguish their faces, but they looked handsome, though desperately frightened. Accompanying this was an indescribable sense, which I have sometimes had in dreams, of an overwhelming intense vastness—space-immensity rushing over one with a terrible power; and at the same time the feeling of numbers, as if I was in the presence of a multitude of people. ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... trees there had grown upon our ears a distant sound. Tonnison bent forward, listening. I could hear it more plainly now; it was continuous and harsh—a sort of droning roar, seeming to come from far away. I experienced a queer, indescribable, little feeling of nervousness. What sort of place was it into which we had got? I looked at my companion, to see what he thought of the matter; and noted that there was only puzzlement in his face; and then, as I watched his ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... her closer. This sort of thing was very sweet to him, and the girl's dull personality had bloomed like some pale, delicate flower. He saw unfathomed depths in her grey eyes, shining now, with the indescribable light that comes from within. She had been negative and colourless, but now she was a lovely mystery—a half-blown windflower on some brown, bare hillside, where Life, in all its fulness, was yet ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... blow, striking the whole world at once; a cosmic convulsion, quite indescribable. The air became suddenly a living thing, which leaped against your face; the windows of the little eating-place flew inward in a shower of glass, and the walls and tables shook as if with palsy. The sound of it all was a vast, all-pervasive sound, at once far off and near, tailing away ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... inner lock as of the outer; but at length it did open; and not vain, as hitherto, was her search; her quick eyes directly fell on a roll of paper pushed back into the further part of the cavity, apparently for concealment, and her feelings at that moment were indescribable. Her heart fluttered, her knees trembled, and her cheeks grew pale. She seized, with an unsteady hand, the precious manuscript, for half a glance sufficed to ascertain written characters; and while she acknowledged with awful sensations this striking ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... much for the bellringers. The manner in which all the bells of all the churches in the city are shaken together sometimes would certainly make you groan in despair of your ears. The discord is fortunately indescribable. Well—but here we are at Florence, the most beautiful of the cities devised ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... blonde fur of her robe shaded, with delicate gradations, to the dead-white tones of her furry thighs; the vivid sunshine brought out in its fulness the brilliancy of this living gold and its variegated brown spots with indescribable lustre. ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... voracious air on a corner. A sign leaning against the front of the door-post announced "Free hot soup to-night!" The swing doors, snapping to and fro like ravenous lips, made gratified smacks as the saloon gorged itself with plump men, eating with astounding and endless appetite, smiling in some indescribable manner as the men came from all directions like sacrifices to ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... Folded close they might hang under a leaf, he thought. Lovingly he looked into the dripping darkness of the coverts on each side, as one of their children. He was next musing on a strange sensation he experienced. It ran up one arm with an indescribable thrill, but communicated nothing to his heart. It was purely physical, ceased for a time, and recommenced, till he had it all through his blood, wonderfully thrilling. He grew aware that the little thing he carried in his breast was licking his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... have seen it is a consequence of the law of gravitation that the nearer planets are to the sun the faster they move in their orbits, and the same rule applies to comets too. As the comet dashes up to the sun his pace becomes something indescribable; it has been reckoned for some comets at three hundred miles a second! But behold, as the head flies round the sun the tail is always projected outwards. The nucleus or head may be so near to the sun that the heat it receives would ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... spread a number of mud-built cottages, looking more like bee-hives than human habitations. They had also every one of them a group of date-palms, overhanging a cluster of mean bare houses; and they all alike had a picturesque and even imposing air from a distance, but faded away into indescribable squalor as one got abreast of them. Our progress was monotonous. At twelve, noon, we would pass Aboo-Teeg, with its mosque, its palms, its mud-huts, and its camels; then for a couple of hours we would go on through the midst of a green field on either side, ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... not attempt exhaustively to describe the indescribable. It is enough to assure the sober reader that, grotesque and foolish as it may seem, this is absolutely true, and to record that after the glimpse I had of the Wenuses emerging from the Crinoline in which they had come to the earth from their planet, a kind of fascination ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... sees the actual fact to be and the abstract notions which are all he has with which to describe it. I have attempted to show how it comes about that we are in fact able to perform this apparently impossible feat of describing the indescribable, using Bergson's descriptions of sensible perception and the relations of matter and memory to illustrate my point. If we succeed in ridding ourselves of our common-sense preconceptions, Bergson tells us that we may expect to know the old facts in a new way, face to face, as it were, instead of ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen
... happen. I saw at once that he was a West Pointer. I had seen not more than a dozen graduates of the great military academy, but enough to recognize the characteristics that marked them all. These characteristics are wellnigh indescribable, but they are all included in the terms "soldier ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... paper as pretty as this," she said, "nor new furniture." Her eyes met her father's with indescribable reproach. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... do not presume to call myself your friend, but at all times I am your most respectful servant." The countess left with an indescribable pang in her heart, and before she had taken ten steps the count saw her raise her handkerchief to her eyes. "Do not my mother and you ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Ritchey in the Gap is taken with a very severe attack of cramp colic. I relieve him speedily and effectually by means of active treatment. I found him in a state of almost indescribable distress from the acute pains he had. I decided very quickly, after a brief examination, that the cause of his trouble lay in a spasmodic contraction of the muscles of the bowels. The powerfully antispasmodic action of lobelia and steaming caused ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... in Don Ramon's darkened storeroom, at Kingston, I saw the door open before the figure of an old man with the tired, long, white face, that day I am not likely to forget. I remember the chilly smell of the typical West Indian store, the indescribable smell of damp gloom, of locos, of pimento, of olive oil, of new sugar, of new rum; the glassy double sheen of Ramon's great spectacles, the piercing eyes in the mahogany face, while the tap, tap, tap of a cane on the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... are to sing it vexes me like a mockery,—angers me like an insolence. But only for a moment!... With the utterance of the syllables "to-day," that deep, grim voice suddenly breaks into a quivering tenderness indescribable;—then, marvelously changing, it mellows into tones sonorous and rich as the bass of a great organ,—while a sensation unlike anything ever felt before takes me by the throat... What witchcraft has he learned? what secret ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... the rattle, the boom, the explosion of artillery there leaped suddenly a new tone. It rose clearly above the rest of the din, which had almost ceased to penetrate the consciousness. It approached with such a shrill sound, with such indescribable swiftness, with so fierce a threat, that the sound seemed to be visible, as though you could actually see a screaming semicircle rise in the air, bite its way to one's very forehead, and snap there with a short, hard, whiplike crack. A few feet away ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... and stepped off down the ride, carrying his whole world in his arms, in an indescribable flutter of joy, and triumph, and fear. He had gone some forty yards or so, when he staggered, and stopped ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... scene. I could not see them, being at the rear of the building, but could hear their shouts. The half-dozen Irishmen, I afterwards learned, all answered the roll-call, but I was missing. On this occasion, if it had never occurred before or since, my absence caused indescribable consternation. Many thought I had been burned to death or killed, for the roof of the barn had fallen in. After some little time, however, and after much struggling on my part, I was able to allay their fears by appearing ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... to see the change in Isaura's countenance. She was very pale, and with that indescribable appearance of exhaustion which betrays continued want of sleep; her soft eyes were dim, the play of her lips was gone, her light step ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with the watch, and was greatly enraged when he found that the prisoner had got off. No longer doubting that he had been robbed of his daughter by the Earl of Rochester, he could not make up his mind to abandon her to her fate, and his conflicting feelings occasioned him a night of indescribable anxiety. The party of watch whom he had summoned searched the street for him, and endeavoured to trace out the fugitives,—but without success; and they returned before daybreak ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Lesdiguieres. However, other more satisfying pleasures were his: "Unspeakable joys are showered on us by the exertion of our mental faculties; the quest of ideas, and the tranquil contemplation of knowledge; delights indescribable, because purely intellectual and impalpable to our senses. So we are obliged to use material terms to express the mysteries of the soul. The pleasure of striking out in some lonely lake of clear water, with forests, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... in the face of query, Sarah Kantor was two flights down and well through the lambent aisles of the copper-shop. Outside, she broke into run, along two blocks of the indescribable bazaar atmosphere of Grand Street, then one block to ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... Street! Doesn't it lead out of this?" said Erica, with an indescribable feeling in the back of her neck. "We ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... struggling swarms of tautau. In another twenty minutes there was heard a most extraordinary sound, caused by thousands upon thousands of fish thrashing and jumping about on the sand; while at the sea end of the drive, where the great body of all were massed together, the scene was simply indescribable. What little water was left was beaten into froth and foam by their violent struggles, and the light from the torches showed that a space of about five acres in extent was covered with a shining, silvery mass of splendid tautau, ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... certainly much pleasanter to look at, and even to talk to, now that she had put on a small, clean, black felt hat instead of the broken straw, and had got out from her trunks a pretty warm shawl, and placed a ribbon or two about her in some indescribable manner, and was no longer ashamed of showing her shoes as she sat about upon the deck. There could be no doubt, as she was seen now, that she was the most attractive female on board the ship; but it may be doubted whether the anger of the Mrs. Cromptons, Mrs. Callanders, ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... distinguishable, or are distinguished only by peculiarities of the most glaring kind. But the dialogue is resplendent with wit and eloquence, which indeed are so abundant that the fool comes in for an ample share, and yet preserves a certain colloquial air, a certain indescribable ease of which Wycherley had given no example, and which Sheridan in vain attempted to imitate. The author, divided between pride and shame, pride at having written a good play, and shame at having done an ungentlemanlike thing, pretended that ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the whole of an eminent person's life, beyond, and other than, and apart from, that which the mere general biographer would afford the means of explaining. There is an influence of a great man derived from things indescribable, almost, or incapable of enumeration, or singly insufficient to account for it, but through which his spirit transpires, and his individuality goes forth on the contemporary generation. And thus, I should say, one grand tendency of his life and character was ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... was on the cards that the child MIGHT be tremulously in love, and this conviction now flickered up not a bit the less for his disliking to think of it, for its being, in a complicated situation, a complication the more, and for something indescribable in Mamie, something at all events straightway lent her by his own mind, something that gave her value, gave her intensity and purpose, as the symbol of an opposition. Little Jeanne wasn't really at all in question—how COULD she be?—yet ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... feelings took her up, like a tornado, and made her seem a wonderful actress. In the scene where Norma is tempted to kill her children, she fixed her indignant gaze full upon Fitzgerald, and there was an indescribable expression of stern resolution in her voice, and of pride in the carriage of her queenly head, while she sang: "Disgrace worse than death awaits them. Slavery? ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... indescribable accent. "He make me work on a Sunday. He lose me my two eyes. A bad man, Svord! I will no have ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... forgotten almost as soon as done, was in an exceedingly short time known to every cadet throughout the camp, and I had the indescribable pleasure, some days after, of knowing that by it I had been raised many degrees in the estimation of the corps. Nor did this knowledge remain in camp. It was spread all over the Point. The act was talked of and praised by the cadets wherever ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... by her, as if a strong draught had just fallen upon her. She was not naturally superstitious, as I have said before, yet there was something in the gloom, the deserted house, and this fatal room with its untold story of death which, added to her weird perceptions and that indescribable conviction of an unseen presence, caused even Gwen to press her hand convulsively upon her throbbing heart. For the first time in her life the awful possibilities of darkness were fully borne in upon her and she knew just how her ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... The hollow was a lovely spot of ground, enamelled with flowers that surpassed the exquisitest dyes, and green with a grass brighter than emeralds newly broken.[12] There rose from it also a fragrance of a thousand different kinds of sweetness, all mingled into one that was new and indescribable; and with the fragrance there ascended the chant of the prayer beginning "Hail, Queen of Heaven,"[13] which was sung by a multitude of souls that appeared sitting ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... them, though, for a moment, he did not move. He watched a lady who came rapidly, and yet with a trace of hesitation, down the broad grass-walk towards him. She did not see him. Distance lent her figure an indescribable height, and romance seemed to surround her from the floating of a purple veil which the light air filled ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... few moments in indescribable anxiety, and then exclaimed, "Is it really thus?—And, in English land, am I to be deprived of the poor chance of safety which remains to me, for want of an act of charity which would not be refused to ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... medallion, "Psyche,"—spelled it without trying to pronounce it—and then turned his attention to the people who were descending the rubber-carpeted steps and grouping themselves under the direction of a tall man who reminded Thomas Jefferson of his Uncle Silas with an indescribable something ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... comprehend how, without blame, but with great truth and understanding, it has been said that Divine love weeps with indescribable groans, because having all it loves all, and loving ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... was worthy of the portrait. That dark face was full of angles and furrowed deep in every direction; the chin was furrowed; there were great hollows at the temples; the eyes were sunken in yellow orbits. The maxillary bones, which his indescribable gauntness caused to protrude, formed deep cavities in the centre of both cheeks. These protuberances, as the light fell upon them, caused curious effects of light and shadow which deprived that face of its last vestige of resemblance to the human countenance. And then, too, the lapse of years had ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... hard, grim, dumb; it is the enormity of mathematical power applied to utilitarian ends of solidity and durability. These leagues of palaces, of warehouses, of business structures, of buildings describable and indescribable, are not beautiful, but sinister. One feels depressed by the mere sensation of the enormous life which created them, life without sympathy; of their prodigious manifestation of power, power with-out pity. They are the architectural ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... their way up the track as fast as possible, and as they approached the spot where the accident had taken place, an indescribable feeling came over the girl. Suppose the men were dead! And if not dead, they surely must be fearfully mangled. How could she endure the sight? But struggle on she did, and at length saw one of the men limping painfully toward her. His clothes were torn, and his face and hands ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... 125.) by a traveller, who heard in a valley beneath him, thickly covered with scrub, "a din which completely astonished" him; on crawling onwards he beheld, to his amazement, about one hundred and fifty of the magnificent lyre-cocks, "ranged in order of battle, and fighting with indescribable fury." The bowers of the Bower- birds are the resort of both sexes during the breeding-season; and "here the males meet and contend with each other for the favours of the female, and here the latter assemble and coquet with the males." With two of the genera, the same bower is resorted ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... Street is a winding road, which leads through the town into the country. The houses are indescribable—they are of all styles. Without any pretence at architectural adornment, some are high, others low; some stand back with several feet of pavement before them, others come forward and oblige one to walk in the road. Here and there is a ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... curly hair. The face was of a beautiful, clear oval, with that warm brunette tint in which the Italian painters delight. The black eyebrows were strongly and clearly defined, and there was in the face an indescribable expression of childish innocence and shyness, mingled with a kind of confiding frankness, that gave the picture the charm which sometimes fixes itself in faces for which we involuntarily make a history. She was represented as simply ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... surprised to learn that I have been reading up on this subject during the last few months; but, as I have also been practicing medicine, at the same time, the mental conflict has been something indescribable. I told myself, in my presumption and egotism, that if there was healing power in Christian Science I would look into it and utilize it in connection with my own methods. The result has been a state ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... obligation. She prefers the inferior man; and this preference implies a rooted ethical defect in her nature. In the romance of Sir T. Mallory the preference she gives to Lancelot would have been signally just, had she been free to choose. For Lancelot is of an indescribable grandeur; but the limit of Arthur's character is thus shown in certain words that he uses, and that Lancelot never could have spoken. "Much more I am sorrier for my good knight's loss than for the loss of my queen; for queens might I have enough, but, such a fellowship of good knights ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... mesmerized his fellows and fascinated his victims of both sexes. His personality was clear-cut and outstanding. Men and women who met him for the first time felt that in conversation he held them by some curious, indescribable influence—held them as long as he cared, until by his will they were released from a strange thraldom that ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... flew, no javelin was stained. The jagged hail was a herald of our coming; the levens that smote and stabbed were our sword and spear, while ever the hurricane roared and screamed with a million separate voices which blended to one yell of sound, hideous and indescribable. ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... large coarse sea-biscuits, produced one of those useful knives which contain innumerable blades, with pickers, tweezers, corkscrews, and other indescribable implements; also a note-book, a pencil, a small pocket-case of surgical instruments (without which he never moved during his wanderings), and a Testament—the one that had been given to him on his last birthday by his mother. Old Peter contributed to the general fund ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... marvellous, aerial, the soul of something—is it beauty? is it sorrow?—that great white pride of love in mourning such as only here in all the round of our little world lifts itself to the stars, the unpaintable, indescribable Taj Mahal. A gentle breath stole out with a scent of jessamine and such a memory! I closed my eyes and felt the ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... flushed faces and feverish eyes and loud laughter. Above all the tumult was the voice of the orchestra, calling, calling, like the storm wind upon the mountains; the music was wild and chaotic, and produced an indescribable sense of pain and confusion. When one realized that this same thing was going on in thousands of places in this district it seemed that here was a flood of dissipation that out-rivalled even that ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... rest of his body were drained of the blood that choked his heart. He opened his travelling-bag, took out a large silver flask, looked at it, sighed, shuddered slightly, poured about two tablespoonfuls of brandy down his throat; and then, with a gesture of indescribable disgust, emptied the remainder out of the window into the yard below. He undressed and got into bed quickly, turned over on his right side for greater ease, and was soon asleep and ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... would be hardly worth stating except for the warning they afford against retarding compromises. In reading these letters one never doubts what Coleridge tells us of himself: 'that he loved truth with an indescribable awe,' or, as he beautifully says, 'that he would creep towards the light, even if the light had made its way through a rent in the wall of the temple.' And yet there is something sad in reading them by the light which twenty-five years have ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... life was very pale, and had exquisitely chiselled features, and the ones I now looked upon were of the same cast. The height was also similar, and an indescribable atmosphere of refinement, purity, and quiet dignity, for which she had been remarkable; all this was present with this materialisation. More than this I cannot say, for no materialisation I have ever seen could be truthfully considered ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... of me, on this occasion, when I am obliged to use sharp words to the Poles, not to remember the indescribable affection and kindness they have shown me in Russian Poland as well as in Austrian Poland. Among them I ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... increased on the right hand and on the left; before, behind, swelled an indescribable clamor. Occasionally there was a crash, followed by sudden peals of fright, telling of other ships ridden down, and their ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... calling, and she was stacked. Beside her, little Maya Wilson would have looked about eight years old. Her hair was as red as the inside of a blast furnace, and had about the same effect on Forrester's pulse rate. Her face was a slightly rounded oval, her body a series of mathematically indescribable curves. ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... overthrow them by the sheer weight of horse and car, and crush them and their arms beneath the hoofs and wheels. And where the scythes caught them, men and weapons were cut to shreds. [32] In the midst of indescribable confusion, the chariots rocking among the weltering mounds, Abradatas was thrown out and some of his comrades with him. There they stood, and fought like men, and there they were cut down and died. The Persians, pouring in after them, dealt slaughter and destruction where Abradatas ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... elegant conversation acquired new pathos from the anguish that was driven back to his heart; like the beds of rivers, which infuse their own nature with the current, his hidden grief imparted an indescribable interest and charm to all his sentiments and actions. [Footnote: When this was written, (in the year 1804,) domestic hours were earlier; and the "supper hour" had not then dissipation and broken rest for ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... the sentry who was standing near the treasure chest, a big, grey-eyed Cossack with a great tuft of fair hair, and the expression of a faithful retriever, and in a tone of indescribable contempt, Chun Wa said "Ping!" "Ping" in Chinese means soldier-man, and if you wish to express your contempt for a man there is no word in the whole of the Chinese language which expresses it so fully and so emphatically as the ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... and said: "I'll hang you." There was a law or regulation of the rebel government directing or authorizing the hanging of any slave caught running away; and this fellow was going to carry it out to the letter. I talked and pleaded for my life. My feelings were indescribable. God only knows what they were. Dr. Carter, one of the soldiers, who knew me and the entire McGee family, spoke up and said: "You had better let me go and tell Mr. Jack McGee about him." The captain agreed to this, and the doctor went. ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes |
