"Inexplicable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that queer debate a good many times in the ten days that followed. It revealed Jack Fyfe to her in a new, inexplicable light, at odd variance with her former conception of the man. She could not have visualized him standing with one foot on the stove front speaking calmly of love and marriage if she had not seen him with her own eyes, heard him with somewhat incredulous ears. ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... account for without falling back on the primitive conception of gift as arising from direct communication with the gods. That she becomes a Medicine Woman is due to the circumstance of being born into a time which fails to discriminate very clearly as to just which of the inexplicable things lie within the control of her particular gift. That she accepts the interpretation of her preeminence which common opinion provides for her, does not alter the fact that she is no more or less than just the gifted woman, too much occupied with the use of her gift ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... times to anybody. Also the chimney on fire, the parish engine, and perjury on the part of the Beadle. But I apprehend that we were personally fortunate in engaging a servant with a taste for cordials, who swelled our running account for porter at the public-house by such inexplicable items as 'quartern rum shrub (Mrs. C.)'; 'Half-quartern gin and cloves (Mrs. C.)'; 'Glass rum and peppermint (Mrs. C.)'—the parentheses always referring to Dora, who was supposed, it appeared on explanation, to have imbibed ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... quite inexplicable to the ignorant, and was assumed to be the voice of some spirit or mountain gnome living in the heart of the rock, to whose habitation a ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... For a moment Emma seemed threatened with another attack of that inexplicable laughter. She ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... placarded.' The expression has acquired somewhat ignoble associations from modern advertising, but that is no reason why we should lose sight of its force. So, then, Paul says, 'In my preaching, Christ was conspicuously set forth. It is like some inexplicable enchantment that, having seen Him, you should turn away to gaze on others.' It is insanity which evokes wonder, as well as sin which deserves rebuke; and the fiery question of my ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... cool and politic a man as Kheyr-ed-Din this outburst is wholly inexplicable. Judged by our standards, the flogging of Hassan was not only brutal but silly, as raising up to himself enemies of the most bitter description in the midst of his own followers; and yet cruelty was so engrained ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... of the Rue de Choiseul and the Rue de Hanovre, Pons suffered from the inexplicable emotions which torment clear consciences; for a panic terror such as the worst of scoundrels might feel at sight of a policeman, an agony caused solely by a doubt as to Mme. de Marville's probable reception of him. That grain of sand, grating ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... side-frame she heard the fall of some tiny object on the floor. Seizing the light she began to search in the mound of filth of all kinds that was under the bed, and finally laid her hand on a bit of polished steel about half an inch long, the use of which was to her inexplicable. ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... and did not understand that I was as perplexed as themselves, and, being of more sensitive complexion of mind than myself, were made ill by the suspense. And they too of course for the time thought me mysterious and inexplicable. I ask their pardon as far as I was really unkind to them. There was a gifted and deeply earnest lady, who in a parabolical account of that time, has described both my conduct as she felt it, and that of such as herself. In a singularly graphic, amusing vision of pilgrims, who were ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... people this must be who could do such work as this! Again the sense of amazement struck through to Chet despite the pain—amazement and a feeling of an inexplicable incongruity when he saw the leather-winged creatures that had him in their grip. And again there were figures high overhead—white, floating figures on pinions of pure white; their faces, kindly and serene, looked down ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... men were not fitted for the work. It needed a beefy person with fat legs and a large amount of inexplicable dignity, a regular God-knows-why loftiness. Truth, in those days, real talent was usually engaged in some form of rascality, barring the making of books and sermons. When one remembers the impenetrable dulness of the great mass of the people, the frivolity of the gentry, ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... idea of the name of the place his son had gone to. He had not.' As soon as Commander Gambier arrived at Newcastle, in New South Wales, he met an exceptionally ragged ostler. As the ostler handed him his horse, Mr. Gambier felt an irresistible though inexplicable conviction that this was the old cabman's son. He felt absolutely sure ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... he had been looking at her steadily for quite a minute, owing to some inexplicable overpowering sensation which had seized upon him, he would most certainly not have been able to tell you the colour of her hair or that her feet ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... woman—a creature with a vampire's heart and the glamour of Helen of Troy—a woman whose cheeks were still round and smooth, but whose eyes were alight with the flame of insanity—a frightful, hungry, soulless wretch. And as he sat at the play and watched that glittering, inexplicable woman, and thought of her roles, Douglass asked himself: "How will she meet me to-morrow? What will be the light in her eyes when she turns them upon me? Will she meet me alone—haughty, weary with praise, or will she be surrounded by those ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... doctrine as Darwin propounds it. It is, in fact, already becoming unpopular among scientific men. Lyell proposed the origination of new species by leaps; as we see great geniuses born of commonplace parents; and Huxley supports that opinion, and Parsons, Owen and Mivart coincide in this inexplicable explanation. The author of the Vestiges of Creation accounts for improved species from a prolongation of the period of gestation. But Hyatt and Cope derive them from quite the contrary process—accelerated ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... channels are more likely to have been continuously united within a recent period than the islands separated by deeper channels, we can understand how it is that a relation exists between the depth of the sea separating two mammalian faunas, and the degree of their affinity—a relation which is quite inexplicable on the theory of independent acts ...
— The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution • George John Romanes
... found more on the banks of a river than anywhere else, and also only on the banks of the Tiber, for it is not found on the banks of any other river. Any one would think that dead shells were gifted with the power of walking about, for certainly it is an inexplicable wonder how they got there." Of Helix muralis we are informed that "The Romans eat these snails, not the whole of them, but only their feet. In ancient times the most wealthy people used to eat snails, and ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... phenomena observed by M. Arago between metals and magnets when neither are moving (120.), as well as most of the results obtained by Sir John Herschel, Messrs. Babbage, Harris, and others, in repeating his experiments; accounting at the same time perfectly for what at first appeared inexplicable; namely, the non-action of the same metals and magnets when at rest. These results, which also afford the readiest means of obtaining electricity from magnetism, I shall now ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... smooth many a rough place. He was now entirely without companionship, resenting from the outset both the ill-natured attacks and the playful personal allusions through which boys so often begin, and with time knit ever more firmly, their inexplicable friendships. To the taunts about Corsica which began immediately he answered coldly, "I hope one day to be in a position to give Corsica her liberty." Entering on a certain occasion a room in which unknown to ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... have been occasioned by, and have followed immediately upon, our Lord's solemn and pathetic announcement of His sufferings. But the connection is not difficult to trace. The disciples believed that, in some inexplicable way, the sufferings which our Lord was shadowing forth were to be the immediate precursors of His assuming His regal dignity. And so they took time by the forelock, as they thought, and made haste to ensure their places ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... I both believe in the ancient theory of reincarnation," Luther told me. "It sheds light on aspects of life otherwise inexplicable. Memory is not a test of truth; just because man fails to remember his past lives does not prove he never had them. Memory is blank concerning his womb-life and infancy, too; but he probably passed through them!" ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... after all they were getting what they had paid for, with an introduction to a beauty and heiress thrown in. But apropos of this latter boon, it is dawning upon me that Rachel Guest is receiving more attention than Monny. This strikes me as inexplicable. There are more men than women in our party, all young except Sir John Biddell, General Harlow, and Mills of Manchester, a soft, fat sort of fellow whose first name you can never remember. It occurred to me on starting, that the ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... you will take proper care of them; that's all. Pollyanna, please pick up that chair; and you have banged two doors in the last half-minute." Miss Polly spoke sternly, all the more sternly because, for some inexplicable reason, she felt inclined to cry—and Miss Polly was not used ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... almost wish she had made good her escape. She got out, Heaven alone knows how, to see her child, which she had heard was ill. But the ground she must have covered in the time! She was absolutely dead beat when she was taken. And she was not in her prison clothes. That is so inexplicable. How she got others she alone knows. Some one must have befriended her, and given them to her—some one very poor, for she was miserably clad, and the extraordinary thing is that though she was traced to the deserted cottage ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... ridiculous though it seemed, that in some subtle and inexplicable fashion he was in danger. At any rate, he was hopelessly bewildered. He did not understand why this very beautiful lady should look at him as though they were old friends, why her eyes should appeal to him so often for sympathy, why her fingers, which a moment ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Inexplicable, incomprehensible Being! I know that the imaginings Of my soul are unable Even to sketch thy shadow! But, if it be our duty to praise thee, Then it is impossible for weak mortals Otherwise to render thee homage Than, simply, to lift their hearts to thee, To give way to boundless joy, ...
— The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems • Alexander Pushkin and other authors
... Osgood held for old sake's sake. The other commissions bore American signatures, most of them well known and well esteemed. On the wall right above where Smith sat was the gold seal of his own company, the Guardian, and against the seal the inexplicable hieroglyph which served Mr. James Wintermuth for his presidential signature. Then there was the great white sheet with the black border which set forth to all the world by these presents that Silas Osgood and Company were the duly accredited agents of ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... groaning aloud with physical pain, a young gentleman came into the room and nonchalantly inquired if I had seen his bow and arrow. He made no account of my groans, which he accepted, as he had to accept so much else, as a piece of the inexplicable conduct of his elders; and like a wise young gentleman, he would waste no wonder on the subject. Those elders, who care so little for rational enjoyment, and are even the enemies of rational enjoyment ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unpleasant dream which had somehow gifted him with an artificial importance in my mind, I should have cherished few regrets at his sudden flitting. As it was, I had a curious sense of uneasiness, and an inexplicable impression that in some undefined way I had done him an injustice, or been careless of his interests, though in reality I was very sure I had done nothing ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... from my place and made for the nearest exit. My difficulty came, not from the crowd or anything like that, but from an inexplicable sensation that I was committing some crime by stirring while Barber was on the stage, and even ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Finlanders relish penny candles. The Nepaulese gourmandise on putrid fish. I am fond of mouldy cheese, and organ-grinders are an object of affection with some of our home community. I know that the general run of natives delight in a nautch. Tastes differ, but to me it is an inexplicable phenomenon. ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... moments were spent in the search, before he discovered that Euphra's foot was upon it. He begged her to move a little, but received no reply either by word or act. Looking up in some alarm, he saw that she was either asleep or in a faint. By an impulse inexplicable to himself at the time, he went at once to the windows, and drew down the green blinds. When he turned towards her again, she was reviving or awaking, he could ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... excuse for their curiosity. As before hinted, Guest's appearance in his overalls and woolen shirt was somewhat incongruous, and, for some inexplicable reason, the same face and figure which did not look inconsistent in rags and extreme poverty now at once suggested a higher social rank both of intellect and refinement than his workman's dress indicated. This, added to his surliness of ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... her. The operations of thought were quickened, and she was presently convinced that the next time she saw Philip she should learn all—she might even find him repentant for having been weak and credulous. Edward's self-reproach was the most inexplicable mystery of all. In his brotherly grief he had no doubt exaggerated some slight carelessness of speech, some deficiency of watchfulness and zeal. Hester must never know of these sorrowful things that Edward had said. There was ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, 10 who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... observed and meditated," I said. "That's an excellent way of coming to a conclusion. And may I ask at what conclusion he had managed to arrive? On what ground did he cease to wonder at the inexplicable? For I can't admit humanity to be the explanation. It ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... like a howl, and kept upon his way. The footfalls were as swift; he saw their impressions at his heels—prints of a small, lithe, human foot, made by no living man. He shut his eyes and his ears, but the consciousness remained, the inexplicable phenomenon of some invisible but familiar thing which would not leave him; which made its register as it passed; which no speed could outstrip, no ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... the emotions of Verona; it was thus, indeed, that he himself, confronted with statements and an explanation which did not satisfy him, accounted to himself, like any mother's son of his lieges. He explained their explanation, but only by another inexplicable formula. The energy with which he expounded his own view to those about him betrayed, perhaps, a lurking uneasiness ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... like young children, who seem to say to their mother, "Make haste to kiss me, that I may go to play." In short, Emilie vouchsafed to be fond of her parents. But often, by those sudden whims, which seem inexplicable in young girls, she kept aloof and scarcely ever appeared; she complained of having to share her father's and mother's heart with too many people; she was jealous of every one, even of her brothers and sisters. Then, after creating a desert about her, the strange girl accused all nature ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... prospect of being notified month after month that a lady would be on view somewhere. It was like going for a fitting; it was horrible. Besides, what use was it? Within a week or two an enormous and utterly inexplicable emptiness had yawned before him, revealing life as a hollow delusion. ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... the beginning of time, played a secondary and subordinate part in the life of nations; so it will be till the end of time. Nations are built up and moved by another force which sways and dominates them, the origin of which is unknown and inexplicable: that force is the force of an insatiable desire to go on to the end, though at the same time it denies that end. It is the force of the persistent assertion of one's own existence, and a denial of death. It's the spirit of life, as the Scriptures call it, 'the river of living water,' ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... touch, a climax long imagined, plotted and hilariously enjoyed in prospect, he next produced, before the bewildered eyes of Snorky Green, what in school-day parlance is known as a Trophy of Trophies; an incredible, amazing, inexplicable thing, a tasseled, beribboned, pink and white bed cap! Snorky made a feeble gesture or two and then lay down to signify that the ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... higher—a spiritual life. He seems to have comprehended the deeper meaning of promise and prophecy. We cannot tell what remorseful and despairing thoughts filled his soul as he left his home—how strange and inexplicable may have seemed all the ways of God toward him. Yet he must have felt that, in punishment of his deceit and falsehood, he was thus sent forth with but his scrip and staff, while he left Esau to inherit the possessions ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... an instant believe in the coarse interpretation which others might have given to the elopement; had that been possible, the keenest of her pain might have been dulled by contempt. No, no! The worst that she thought was that Harrington, for some inexplicable reason, had withdrawn Lina from her home to marry her in private; but this was enough. It had broken up that confidence, unexpressed, but always a holy principle in both, which had so long held those two souls ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... 'History would be inexplicable after all without the honest fanatic,' he said to himself on the way home. 'I suppose I had forgotten it. There is nothing like a dread of being bored for blunting your ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with the inspired tactlessness of children in emphasizing and exaggerating what she had wished could be passed over unnoticed, a gesture of hers as inexplicable to her as to them. Oh well, the best thing, of course, was to carry it off matter-of-factly, turn the leaf back, and let them see it. And then refute them by insisting on the literal truth of what she ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... sensations of heat or pain, more or less violent according to the action of the fire. But I do not think that this clever man finds many to approve of his idea. The shortest way, in my opinion, would be, to deny the effects of these charms; for if these effects are real, they are inexplicable by physics, and can only be attributed to ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... This catastrophe was inexplicable to scientific men; politicians suspected some mystery; the people poison. These reports of poison, however, have neither been confirmed nor disproved by time. The most probable opinion is that this prince ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... downstairs, for he was sensitive about the remarks of his companions, and anxious to keep a possible failure to himself. All the work had to be done upstairs, therefore, and the frequent absence of the partners from the schoolroom, though much regretted, did not seem at all inexplicable to the others. It was understood that Peggy and Robert had some interest in common; but as winter advanced this was no unusual occurrence in a house where Christmas was a carnival, and surprises of an elaborate nature were planned ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... could not explain it, but as the girl emerged from the curtains, a strange, confused memory of something and somebody she had known in the past came over her. But when the girl spoke, a more inexplicable sensation took possession of the listener, for her voice was the feminine of Preston Cheney's masculine tones, and then as she looked at the girl again the haunting memories of the first glance were explained, ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... in the eyes of the Franciscans, and a focus in the University of Paris. By very many of the leading minds it had been accepted. But at length the Dominicans, the rivals of the Franciscans, sounded an alarm. They said it destroys all personality, conducts to fatalism, and renders inexplicable the difference and progress of individual intelligences. The declaration that there is but one intellect is an error subversive of the merits of the saints, it is an assertion that there is no difference among men. What! is there no difference ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... thinking that silence would best wear out the recollection. The only wonder was that her senses had not been permanently injured by that night of terror, which accounted for her unconquerable dread of sleeping in the dark; and a still more inexplicable horror of the Zoological Gardens, together with many a nervous misery that Ermine had found it vain to combat. The Colonel asked if the nurse's cruelty had been the ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mossy platform and fell asleep almost instantly. Lewis lit a pipe; the vague forebodings he had felt in the morning had returned to him, only increased tenfold. He felt an unaccountable physical discomfort, an inexplicable sensation of uneasiness. Then he realised what it was. He felt there was someone in the house besides themselves, someone or something that was always behind him, moving when he moved and watching him. He walked into the impluvium, but heard nothing and saw nothing. There were none ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... law. His business is to know the laws of that part of nature which we call human nature, and to use these laws, as fast as discovered, for solving the problems presented by the human individual or group. For him, even the most capricious conduct has its causes, even the most inexplicable has its explanation—if only the cause can be unearthed, which he does not pretend he can always actually accomplish, since causes in the mental realm are often very complex. No one can be a psychologist all of the time; no one can or should always maintain this matter-of-fact ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... of black sand, and also about the gloomy shingle hill range extending from the north-east to the south-west. The black underlying rock where exposed to the air shows numberless holes corroded in it, as by the action of moving salt water. An inexplicable isolated hill stands in the centre of the valley, which here is not perfectly flat, but in a gentle incline, higher at its south-western extremity than at ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... movements. On much that is obscurely indicated in scarcely decipherable scrawls, light is thrown by the French memoirs of that age. The names of Madame de Talmond, Madame d'Aiguillon, and the celebrated Montesquieu, are beacons in the general twilight. The memoirs also explain, what was previously inexplicable, the motives of Charles in choosing a life 'in a hole of a rock,' as he said after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748). It is necessary, however, to study the internal feuds of the Jacobites at this period, and these are illuminated ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... short and somewhat inexplicable pause, and once more Rochester knew that he was in the presence of an enemy. He shrugged his shoulders and turned toward ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... word Mysticism describes a state of mind in which the subject imagines that he perceives or divines unknown and inexplicable relations among phenomena, discerns in things hints at mysteries, and regards them as symbols by which a dark power seeks to unveil, or at least to indicate, all sorts of marvels.... It is always connected with strong ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... anything! I knew from the first it was all nonsense. My father had told me so a score of times. But having been reared in the superstitious Galloway of the ancient days—well, there are certain chills and creeps for which a man is not responsible, inexplicable twitchings of the hairy scalp of his head, maybe even to the breaking of a cold sweat over his body, which do not depend upon belief. I kept saying to myself, "There is nothing! I do not believe a word of it! 'Tis naught but old wives' fables!" But, all the same, ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... in the library. His manner was that of a man labouring with some dreadful thought, and endeavouring to give an air of carelessness and insensibility to his behaviour. Perhaps no carriage of any other sort could have produced a sensation of such inexplicable horror, or have excited, in the person who was its object, such anxious uncertainty about the event.—"That is your ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... the first year the Huberts were often discouraged. Angelique, who promised to be skilful in embroidering, disconcerted them by sudden changes to inexplicable idleness after days of praiseworthy application. She was capricious, seemed to lose her strength, became greedy, would steal sugar to eat when alone, and her cheeks were flushed and her eyes looked wearied under their reddened lids. ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... favoured him incredibly thus far, and if he failed to follow the guidance that had been vouchsafed him he would prove himself but an unworthy vessel. He took up the long fork—it chattered against the pot as he seized it—and, overcoming a momentary and inexplicable nausea, impaled the first piece of meat that rolled to the surface. There were yams also and a sort of dumpling made of manioc. When he had filled his plate he rose and turned suddenly; the woman and the cripple had stopped eating and were watching him. They ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... greatly inferior force he had challenged Doria and attacked. Doria had not only declined the challenge but fled back to Corfu. No wonder the Sultan ordered the cities of his domain to be illuminated. Barbarossa's prizes included two galleys and five nefs, but he, too, had failed in an inexplicable fashion in drawing off from the assault on the Galleon of Venice at the end of the day's fighting. It is with her, with the gallant Condalmiero and his men, that all the honor of the day belongs. Nothing in the adventurous 16th century surpasses their splendid, disciplined ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... Wednesday morning that the Emden, with a dummy fourth funnel and flying the British ensign, in some inexplicable fashion sneaked past the French torpedo boat Mosquet, which was on patrol duty outside, and entered the outer harbor of Penang. Across the channel leading to the inner harbor lay the Russian cruiser Jemtchug. Inside were the French torpedo boats Fronde and Pistolet and the torpedo ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... officials were never too proud to call upon him for help, and many a difficulty he had helped them out of, though he refused an offer of a regular post in the Criminal Investigation Department, preferring to be at liberty to choose what cases he would take up. Above all things he loved the strange and inexplicable. Gimblet had not always been a detective. Indeed, he often smiled to himself when he thought of the extraordinary confidence which the public now ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... were no distractions, and as the boy put his head down on his arms, rolling it from side to side as though to shake them off, the same old images pursued him—the lodging-house room, and the curtainless iron bed in which he slept with his father: reminiscences of some long, inexplicable anguish through which that father had passed; then of his death, and his own lonely crying. He seemed still to feel the strange sheets in that bed upstairs, where a compassionate fellow-lodger had put him the night after his ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Mademoiselle Gamard precisely as a fly is caught in a spider's web. The first day that he went to dine and sleep at the house he was detained in the salon after dinner, partly to make his landlady's acquaintance, but chiefly by that inexplicable embarrassment which often assails timid people and makes them fear to seem impolite by breaking off a conversation in order to take leave. Consequently he remained there the whole evening. Then a friend of his, a certain Mademoiselle ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... Wessington had hired the carriage and the coolies with their old livery was lost. Again and again I went round this treadmill of thought; and again and again gave up baffled and in despair. The voice was as inexplicable as the apparition. I had originally some wild notion of confiding it all to Kitty; of begging her to marry me at once; and in her arms defying the ghostly occupant of the 'rickshaw. "After all," I argued, "the presence of the 'rickshaw ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... We have quarreled. I hardly know why. For three years he has not spoken to me. I am not aware of his motives, and indeed have not cared to ask. He began by rudely refusing to conduct one of my concerts. His behavior towards me has been as inexplicable as it is uncivil. However, as I see plainly that he wishes on the present occasion to figure at Marshal Damremont's ceremony, and as it would evidently be agreeable to you, I consent to give up the baton to him, on condition that I have at ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... plain soda was a ludicrous hardship, and native vegetables an abomination at any price. Then Llewellyn and Rosa Norton—she had a small inalienable income, and they were really married though they preferred for some inexplicable reason to be thought guilty of less conventional behaviour—would depart in another direction, full of gratification for the present and of confidence for the future. Llewellyn usually made a parting statement to the newspapers that although his aims were unalterably ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... After McClellan's inexplicable retreat from before the Rebel Capital —when, having gained a great victory at Malvern Hills, Richmond would undoubtedly have been ours, had he but followed it up, instead of ordering his victorious troops to retreat like "a whipped Army"—[See ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... at myself a long way off," she added. "As if I saw myself as I saw the grey sea and the islands on the way to Sidi-Zerzour. What magic there is here. And I can't get accustomed to it. Each day I wonder at it more and find it more inexplicable. ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... appeared to me a most curious and inexplicable fact, that when good dogs are sent out from home to a hot climate such as this, they invariably are found to deteriorate to an uncommon extent, the heat causing them to lose their spirit, and also their scent. But, in fact, the animal in perfection, ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... who have dodged you round a Roman corner, not a ragged baron who has levied toll for passage through the public squares, a privileged robber who has shut up for you a pleasant street or waylaid you at an interesting church, but he is sure to be there. How they got there is as inexplicable as how the apples got into the dumplings in Peter Pindar's poem. But at the first ring of a festa-bell, they start up from under ground, (those who are legless getting only half-way up,) like Roderick Dhu's men, and level their crutches ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Smoothnesse. O it offends mee to the Soule, to see a robustious Pery-wig-pated Fellow, teare a Passion to tatters, to verie ragges, to split the eares of the Groundlings: who (for the most part) are capeable of nothing, but inexplicable dumbe shewes, & noise: I could haue such a Fellow whipt for o're-doing Termagant: it outHerod's Herod. Pray you ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... parrot, for which 'Bias had an inexplicable affection, might be awkward, as Cai had promised. But it was less ticklish anyhow than to broach the subject uppermost in the minds of both; and Cai opened on it with a sense of ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... in the shop, evidently. Sheridan did not know what to make of it. Ordinarily he would have shouted a hilarious demand for the meaning of the mystery, but an inexplicable silence had been imposed upon him by the hush that fell upon his entrance and by the odd look every man in the shop had bent ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... afternoon." Betty remembered because her monthly allowance always came on the third. She had borrowed her quarter for the ride of Helen and paid her out of the instalment that arrived the very next morning. That settled it,—and as Dorothy had pointed out, all Eleanor's seemingly inexplicable queerness about the ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... from her misconduct, without ever shewing the least inclination to alleviate your distress' — 'Nevertheless (said he) I am persuaded she loves me with the most warm affection; but these are incongruities in the composition of the human mind which I hold to be inexplicable.' ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... Gould, or Jay Gould had been misled by Grant. One could hardly doubt that both of them were astonished and disgusted by the result; but neither Jay Gould nor any other astute American mind — still less the complex Jew — could ever have accustomed itself to the incredible and inexplicable lapses of Grant's intelligence; and perhaps, on the whole, Gould was the less mischievous victim, if victims they both were. The same laxity that led Gould into a trap which might easily have become the penitentiary, led the United States Senate, the Executive departments and ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... say, the Socialist movement, like all the other forces of individual and social life, becomes more aggressive as it becomes stronger—and it is, indeed, inexplicable how the opposite view ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... detachment started he had in vain looked for the page who had hitherto been inseparable from "his master," and only the anxiety for Edith, which was so much nearer his heart, was the cause that he had not thought much about the inexplicable ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... me!' But the nominative case in the second person: as, 'O thou persecutor!' 'Oh ye hypocrites!' 'O thou, who dwellest,' &c."—Octavo Gram., INGERSOLL copies this most faulty note literally, adding these words to its abrupt end,—i. e., to its inexplicable "&c." used by Murray; "because the first person is governed by a preposition understood: as, 'Ah for me!' or, 'O what will become of me!' &c., and the second person is in the nominative independent, there being a direct address."—Conversations ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... sentiments and the affairs of human life. Thus the hand has a thousand ways of becoming dry, moist, hot, cold, soft, rough, unctuous. The hand palpitates, becomes supple, grows hard and again is softened. In fine it presents a phenomenon which is inexplicable so that one is tempted to call it the incarnation of thought. It causes the despair of the sculptor and the painter when they wish to express the changing labyrinth of its mysterious lineaments. To stretch out your hand to a man is to save him, it serves as a ratification ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... up the cases we have heard of women who have "gone wrong," and made, if not mesalliances, at least marriages inexplicable on any rational grounds, it would fill up a long summer's day, even without drawing on darker recollections of post-nuptial transgression. In these last cases, perhaps, the altar and absolute indifference was a more dangerous ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... floating hair and bloated outline showed him that it was a DEAD man, and of a type and build far different from his former companion. There was a bruise upon his matted forehead and an enormous wound in his throat already washed bloodless, white, and waxen. An inexplicable fear came upon him, not at the sight of the corpse, for he had been in Indian massacres and had rescued bodies mutilated beyond recognition; but from some moral dread that, strangely enough, quickened ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... say that his spirit was greatly agitated, as he walked towards the town, by uncertainty as to how he ought to act in the present emergency, and his mind was much confused by the varied, and, to some extent, inexplicable incidents of the evening. His thoughts crystallised, however, as he went along, and he had finally made up his mind what to do by the time he passed the portals Bab-Azoun and entered ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... fascination of the season whose visible beauty seems to include all spiritual things. It cast a spell over him of a long mental silence, as one might say, in which all definite thought expired, from which he aroused himself at last with a shrug of self-contempt, to find inexplicable tears in his eyes. And just then an interruption came, not altogether unwelcome, in the greeting of a familiar voice. It was Lightmark, who had discovered him in the course of a rapid walk down the Row, and had crossed over the small patch of intervening ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... herself to entertain her guests, and had sent for the children, when, to her inexplicable relief, the butler brought her the news that Lord Carse and his son Willie were home, and would appear with all speed. They had been detained two hours in a ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... less complete inhibition of the senses, and by a kind of sleep in which the relations of the subject with the physical world are wholly or partially suspended. The characteristics of this state are greater keenness of the normal faculties, and the appearance of new ones, which are often inexplicable and extraordinary and the more remarkable in proportion as sleep is more profound, the brain calmer, or the physiological state ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... love me," said Switzer as if stunned by the utterly inexplicable phenomenon. "But she did once," he cried. "She did before that schwein came." No words could describe the hate and contempt in his voice. He appeared to concentrate his passions struggling for expression, love, rage, hate, ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... against that when you board the ship. Skylift isn't till dawn, but you can go aboard as soon as the process crew finishes with her." He glanced at the monitor screen, where the swarming crew were still doing inexplicable things to the immobile spacecraft. "It will be another hour or two. Where are you going, ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... woman which went out to her earthly lover, and would fain make him happy, and the nature of the inhabitant of heaven, where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. This was the key to her inexplicable sorrow during the past weeks. This explained why, though she loved him so tenderly, the thought of becoming his wife was ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... keep up to the last the vain hope of recovering; those around them, by a cruel compassion, soothe them in the delusion; so that numbers die of chronic diseases as suddenly as if they had been shot through the heart. Perhaps the author had some reference to those inexplicable presages of death ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... divinely appointed sacrifices, for many centuries, typify his sufferings?—And why did nature shudder, and shroud herself in darkness, at the consummation of those sufferings? All these things are utterly inexplicable, on the supposition that Christ is a ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2 No. 7 Dec. 1827 • Aaron W. Leland and Elihu W. Baldwin
... accomplished in a far shorter time, had not the country been one sheet of ice, which rendered progression both difficult and dangerous. Each person of whom I enquired the distance told me more than the one before, until I thought that a Bosnian 'saht' (hour) was a more inexplicable measure than a German 'stunde' or a Scottish 'mile and a bittoch.' At length, however, the lights of Brod proclaimed our approach to the Turkish town of that name. On the left bank of the Save stands ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... and at the rather sensual lips that unrolled wide and expansive under the black cropped moustache. How curious it was that this was a human being! What Brangwen thought himself to be, how meaningless it was, confronted with the reality of him. Birkin could see only a strange, inexplicable, almost patternless collection of passions and desires and suppressions and traditions and mechanical ideas, all cast unfused and disunited into this slender, bright-faced man of nearly fifty, who was as unresolved now as he was at twenty, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... honest heart even thought it be a heavy one. I shall not detract from you in the slightest degree, or cease to show for you the thorough liking and respect that I feel. It shall simply be a maiden's choice between us two; and you know it is said that the heart makes this choice for reasons inexplicable even to itself." ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... out of harmony with nature and all its surroundings. My thoughts were jostling one another in a wild dance through my breast. Where on earth could they have disappeared so very suddenly! It was quite inexplicable. I must find them. Himmel! I must see her again. I felt in a perfect state of frenzy. So excited was I, that, although it was a broiling hot day in July, I walked along as if I were walking for a wager. I do not think, by the way, that a very learned and distinguished philosopher ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... suggested both agony and revenge. Christine understood, at last, why the Kafirs hated to go about the land after dark, averring that the afflicted bushes threatened and chased them. She began herself to experience an inexplicable feeling of relief, as though at the overcoming of an enemy, when a great spire of smoke betokened the final uprooting and burning of a clump of bush. For fire was the ultimate element used to transform the pest from a malignant into a beneficent factor, and, as aromatic ash, it became of ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... is this—only three or four of the rooms were furnished, and the rest of the house was closed. When I made my escape last night, the cripple must have taken alarm and gone away from here as speedily as possible. What renders the whole thing more inexplicable is the fact that your wife could explain everything if she pleased. But after a check-mate like this, I don't see the slightest reason for staying here any longer. The best thing we can do is to get back to my rooms and discuss the matter ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... far above the ordinary state of human nature, was at the same time visited with a disorder so afflictive, that they who know it by dire experience, will not envy his exalted endowments. That it was, in some degree, occasioned by a defect in his nervous system, that inexplicable part of our frame, appears highly probable. He told Mr. Paradise[193] that he was sometimes so languid and inefficient, that he could not distinguish the hour ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... part failed to cloud Pearl's spirits. She had seen men taken with this not inexplicable shyness before, and she made no effort to rouse Harry from his abstraction or to lure him from his meditations; femininely, intuitively wise, ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... were the same to the occupant of the little room. They passed with equal slowness and impartial darkness. Five days that he could account for crawled by before anything unusual happened to break the strain of his solitary, inexplicable confinement. He could tell when it was morning by the visit of a bewhiskered chambermaid with a deep bass voice, who carried a lighted candle and kicked him into wakefulness. The second day after his incarceration began, he was given food and drink. It was high time, for he was almost ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... came on sultry, the air murky, opaque, with yellow trails of colour dragging in the west: a sullen stillness in the woods and farms; only, in fact, that dark, inexplicable hush that precedes a storm. But Lois, coming down the hill-road, singing to herself, and keeping time with her whip-end on the wooden measure, stopped when she grew conscious of it. It seemed to her blurred fancy more than a deadening sky: ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... throughout his whole life had made a practice of dissimulation and duplicity, was now incensed at the deception of another, was as indignant at it as at some unpardonable backsliding, some inexcusable and inexplicable perfidy. He was quite unable to understand how Elena could have committed such a crime; he denied her all possibility of justification, and rejected the hypothesis of some secret and dire necessity having driven her to sudden flight. He could see nothing but the bare brutal ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... the pain of the primary part of the association cease, when that of the secondary part commences? This is a question of intricacy, but perhaps not inexplicable. The pain of the primary part of these associated trains of motion was owing to too great stimulus, as of the stone at the neck of the bladder, and was consequently caused by too great action of the pained part. This greater action ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... a mind under such circumstances is an almost inexplicable thing, and yet it is absolutely true. Hurstwood could not bring himself to act definitely. He wanted to think about it—to ponder over it, to decide whether it were best. He was drawn by such a keen desire for Carrie, driven by such a state of turmoil in his own affairs that he thought ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... confront in the name of Jesus a hostile world. Is it any wonder that in the eyes of their contemporaries they appeared as men possessed, as men made drunk with the new wine of some strange ecstasy, or mad with the fervour of some inexplicable exaltation? Yet the Spirit did not normally issue in ecstasy. It is not the way of GOD to over-ride men's reason, or to place their individual personalities in abeyance. The operation of the Spirit is ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... scarcely time to prepare for the ceremony! I wish I could even believe it possible that she would do such an unheard-of thing," said Mrs. Mencke, in a tone of despair, and feeling nearly paralyzed by this sudden and inexplicable absence. ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... for it, but not as for a thing that could really happen. It was contrary to all that she knew of the beneficent working of the Power. She thought she knew all its ways, its silences, its reassurances, its inexplicable reservations and evasions. She couldn't be prepared for this—that it, the high and holy, the unspeakably pure thing should allow Harding to prevail, should connive (that was what it looked like) at his taking the gift into his own hands and turning it to his own advantage ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... shaft broke off somewhere near the truss-block at the mouth of the sleeve of the shaft, and the outer end of the shaft and the propeller dropped to the bottom of the sea. It's quite inexplicable, but I find in my experience that inexplicable things frequently happen. We shall finish our run with the starboard shaft only, and shall be obliged to reduce our speed to an average of three ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... more uncomfortable to be married to the perfect wife," declared Mr. Harrison, with a sudden and inexplicable warmth. ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of philosophers concerning the origin of our knowledge, he enlarges the mind, and extends the range of our ideas, ... while clearly distinguishing between proper objects of inquiry and those that must forever remain inexplicable to man in the present state of his faculties. Reasonings from induction ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... toward Dr. Bartolo when the latter claims exemption from the billet, and escapes arrest only by secretly making himself known to the officer commanding the soldiers who had been drawn into the house by the disturbance. The sudden and inexplicable change of conduct on the part of the soldiers petrifies Bartolo; he is literally "astonied," and Figaro makes him the victim of several laughable pranks before he ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... turtle it is so nearly complete that the venous and the arterial blood are fairly separated; in the crocodile it is quite complete, though the arteries are imperfectly arranged. Thus the four-chambered heart of the bird and mammal is not a sudden and inexplicable development. Its advantage is enormous in a cold climate. The purer supply of blood increases the combustion in the tissues, and the animal maintains its temperature and vitality when the surrounding air falls in temperature. It ceases to ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe |
