"Inexpressive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man, good-looking for those who like such good looks. He was light-haired and blue-eyed, with regular and yet not inexpressive features. But his eyes were small and never tranquil, and rarely capable of looking at the person who was speaking to him. He had small well-trimmed, glossy whiskers, with the best-kept moustache, and the best-kept tuft on his chin which were to be seen anywhere. His face still bore ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... his back, his feet slightly apart, stood very straight and stiff by the side of the compass stand. His face, now hardly visible, was as inexpressive as ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... was a little puzzled, and took refuge in the conveniently inexpressive "really." "Did she ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... the hoarse cry of the vulture, flapping her wings and mounting into the air, alarmed at the intrusion of man. Those countenances, which had so lately beamed with daring and defiance, were unmeaning and inexpressive; and what with the effect produced on the dead bodies, by the excessive heat and the mangling and disfiguration of the tomahawk and scalping knife, scarcely one could be distinguished from another. Friends tortured themselves ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... Upon her husband's shoulder, and unmark'd By one distorted feature, by the loss Or blanching of the rose-tint on her cheek, Rose to more perfect worship. It might seem As if a sacred temple, purified By prayers and praises, were a place sublime, Of fitting sanctity, wherein to hear The inexpressive call that summoneth The ready spirit upward. But the change In her delightful home, what words can tell! The shock and contrast, when a mind so skill'd With order and efficiency to fill Each post of ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... leaning on their rifles. Over against her chair the porters were aligned in a great semicircle, tribe by tribe. The intervening flames of a camp fire shone richly on the massed bronze bodies and the brutish faces that had turned, for once, inexpressive. As Lilla sat down in her chair, a low murmur passed through their ranks and lost itself in the gilded fronds of palm trees that hung stiffly, like the scenery of a theater, above ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... to the Inspector but to dismiss him. He had answered all questions willingly, and with a countenance inexpressive of guile. He even indulged in a parting shot on his own account, as full of frank acceptance of the situation as it was fearless in its attack. As he halted in the doorway before turning his back upon the room, he smiled for the third time ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... inaccessible to a little boy of my kind by certain laws of nature which it was impossible to transgress, the picture of a little girl with reddish hair, and a skin freckled with tiny pink marks, who held a trowel in her hand, and smiled as she directed towards me a long and subtle and inexpressive stare. And already the charm with which her name, like a cloud of incense, had filled that archway in the pink hawthorn through which she and I had, together, heard its sound, was beginning to conquer, to cover, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... separate great toes make no noise; nothing is heard, as they glide by, but a 'froufrou' of silken stuffs. I find them all pleasant to look upon; their dollish air pleases me now, and I fancy I have discovered what it is that gives it to them: it is not only their round, inexpressive faces with eyebrows far removed from the eyelids, but the excessive amplitude of their dress. With those huge sleeves, it might be supposed they have neither back nor shoulders; their delicate figures are lost in these wide ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... save the obligatory inquisition of a coroner's jury. An object of ever-recurrent scrutiny was a stranger in the vicinity, who had been subpoenaed also. The facial effect of culture and sophistication was illustrated in his inexpressive, controlled, masklike countenance. He was generally known as the "valley man with the lung complaint," who had built a cabin on the mountain during the summer, banished hither by the advice of his physician for the value to the lungs of the soft, healing air. He wore a brown ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... hands were small and delicate; that her eyes were bright when looked at, but not brilliant so as to make their brilliancy palpably visible to all around her; her hair was dark brown, and worn very plainly brushed from her forehead; her lips were thin, and her mouth, perhaps, in general inexpressive, but when she was eager in conversation it would show itself to be animated with curves of wondrous energy; and, quiet as she was in manner, sober and demure as was her usual settled appearance, she could talk, when the fit came on her, with an energy which in truth surprised ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... finished and cast in the dull, hard, inexpressive plaster, she stands by the workmen while they put it into the marble. She must watch them, for a touch of the tool in the wrong place might alter the whole expression of the face, as a wrong accent in the reader will spoil ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... with the weepers off his cuffs and the crape off his bonnet; he had divested himself of the hateful things whenever he found himself alone, and he was listening with a rapt and inexpressive face to the pensive call of the curlew as it rose over the fields, and the tears were ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... profess so little equipment beyond good will should so disappoint the expectation her first appearance had aroused. The background was a room—it seemed to have been in every case the same—expensively overfurnished, inexpressive, ill-fitting its uses, like a badly chosen ready-made coat. The day was not without its humors, or what would have been humors if her spirit could have rebounded to them. Chiefly, the violent antagonism she found aroused in two or three cases by the ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... and the Amazonian mind, and, she declared, received her kindly refusals with manifest relief. And Arnold Shoesmith struck up a sort of friendship that oddly imitated mine. She took a liking to him because he was clumsy and shy and inexpressive; she embarked upon the dangerous interest of helping him to find his soul. I had some twinges of jealousy about that. I didn't see the necessity of him. He invaded her time, and I thought that might interfere with her work. If their friendship stole some hours from Isabel's ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... thing." Elsie withdrew her observant short-sighted eyes from Mrs. Pendleton's crowning glory, and a smile barely touched the corners of her expressively inexpressive mouth. Mrs. Pendleton glanced up, faintly suspicious of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... should delight in long, flat, cumbrous collections of syllables, such as "locate," "operate," "antagonize," "transportation," "commutation," and "proposition," is an irony of civilisation. These words, if words they may be called, are hideous to the eye, offensive to the ear, and inexpressive to the mind. They are the base coins of language. They bear upon their face no decent superscription. They are put upon the street, fresh from some smasher's den, and not even the newspapers, contemptuous as they are of style, have reason to be proud ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... introduction of incorrect forms, whether by the coinage of new or the revival of obsolete and inexpressive syntactical combinations, ought to be resisted even in trifles, especially where it leads to the confusion of distinct ideas. An example of this is the recent use of the adverbial phrases in respect ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... the heart makes music musical! My neighbor has a mocking-bird: its song Has been as little heeded as the noise Of rattling wheels incessant; but to-day One of its strains brought all Elysium back Into my heart. What was it? What the tie Linking it with some inexpressive joy? At length I solve the mystery! Those notes, Pensively slow and sadly exquisite, Were what the wood-thrush piped at early dawn After that evening passage in the boat, When stars came out, that never more shall set. Oh! ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... coat and lower garments, and enormous high-top boots, to one of which was affixed a brass spur. Over his shoulder, holding the two ends in his hands, he carried a strong, flexible whip, silver mounted, and polished like patent leather. He was about six feet high, stoutly built, with a heavy, inexpressive face, and a clear, sharp gray eye. One glance satisfied me that he was the ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... his character showed itself in his appearance. In figure he was about the middle height, and strongly though sparely built. The head was well-proportioned; the face a lean oval; the complexion sallow; the hair and small moustache very dark; the brown eyes inexpressive and close-set, revealing a tendency to suspiciousness—Bancroft prided himself on his prudence. A certain smartness of dress and a conscious carriage discovered a vanity which, in an older man, would have been ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... horse and rode up to him, Jose was still swearing. He was walking among the wounded sheep, shooting those which he considered helplessly injured. His mouth was dry, his voice husky, and on his lips foam lay in yellow flecks. He ceased to imprecate only when, by repetition, his oaths became too inexpressive ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... When I came down to breakfast that morning I looked sharply into Pitting's face. He was as coldly placid and inexpressive as usual. It was evident to me that his mind was in no way distressed. After breakfast I sat down to work, all the time ceaselessly conscious of the fact of this intruder upon my privacy. Nevertheless, I laboured for several hours, waiting for any development that might ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Has children, with birds or fruit, pretty in features, and utterly inexpressive, like the cherubs ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... They have been much injured by time, and it is difficult to pronounce decidedly on their original workmanship: but, judging by what appears, it would seem to have been of a ruder and coarser character than that of the slabs or of the royal statues. The Nebo images are heavy, formal, inexpressive, and not over well-proportioned; but they are not wanting in a certain quiet dignity which impresses the beholder. They are unfortunately disfigured, like so many of the lions and bulls, by several lines ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... deep-rooted misapprehension in the minds of most critics of the character of Giorgione's art. In their eyes, he is something so perfect as to be incapable of producing anything short of the ideal. He could never have drawn so badly, he never could have composed so awkwardly, he never could have been so inexpressive!—such is the usual criticism. I have elsewhere insisted upon the unevenness which invariably characterises the productions of men who are gifted with a strong artistic temperament, and in Giorgione's case, as I believe, this is particularly true. The Glasgow picture is but one instance ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... class and temperament. Some have nothing salient either in feature or in form. Their eyes are inexpressive, their lips pale, and every feature denotes a want of energy, weakness, and something like suffering. One might almost say they seemed to be incomplete, and that the torch of their lives had ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... Feversham, as he rose briskly from his chair. He was a small wiry man, and, in spite of his white hairs, alert. But the alertness was of the body. A bony face, with a high narrow forehead and steel-blue inexpressive eyes, suggested a ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... She was to be married from Lady Maria's lean old arms, so to speak. Her ladyship derived her usual epicurean enjoyment from the whole thing,—from too obviously thwarted mothers and daughters; from Walderhurst, who received congratulations with a civilly inexpressive countenance which usually baffled the observer; from Emily, who was overwhelmed by her emotions, and who was of a candour in action such as might have appealed to any heart not adapted by the flintiness of its nature to the macadamising ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... thus casually given, she took in full measure. For twenty minutes, by the clock, she aired her views in a stream of vigorous colloquial English, lapsing into ready-made phrases of melodrama, common to the normally inexpressive, in ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... observer for whom one hint of human revelation outweighs in value a warehouseful of inexpressive furniture, a room of this type holds one superlative interest. It is an index of character no less infallible than its owner's face. Its salient features may tell the same tale as a dozen others in the same station—the tale of a soldier going ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... round of jack-pots, say ten—or twenty, if the member from Silver City preferred—and then stop? It would do excellently, the member said, so softly that the Governor looked at him. But Wingo's large countenance remained inexpressive, his black eyes still impersonally fixed on space. He sat thus till his chips were counted to him, and then the eyes moved to watch the cards fall. The Governor hoped he might win now, under the jack-pot system. At noon he should have a disclosure to make; something that would need ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... it is a little staid; but the classical is apt to look so. It is in curious contrast to that inexpressive, unplanned wilderness of Forster's; clear, readable, precise, and sufficiently human. I see nothing lost in it, though I could have wished, in my Scotch capacity, a trifle clearer and fuller exposition of his moral attitude, which is not quite ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... piece of venerable antiquity, for the field of gold had degenerated into a field of drab, and the figure in the centre showed less of leonine nobleness than of art in that imperfect state in which men are fain to content themselves with semblances doubtful and inexpressive, and less than half the result of chance. The entire pageant was such a one as Sir Walter himself could perhaps have improved. He would not have fired so many guns in the hollow, and the grey old castle so near: he would have found means, too, to prevent the crowd from so ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... hardly be considered genial. "He's like some people whose natures are immobile—inexpressive. It's going to take a little while to find out if it's because there is nothing to express, or because he is undemonstrative, and has to show by his conduct rather than by his manners what ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... lady said nothing. She was engaged in contemplating with a studiously inexpressive countenance the stub of her precious and only pencil. It needed ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... injunctions of the Vedas they should all be interpreted as giving us injunctions. Anything therefore found in the Vedas which cannot be connected with the injunctive orders as forming part of them is to be regarded as untrustworthy or at best inexpressive. Thus it is that those sentences in the Vedas which describe existing things merely or praise some deed of injunction (called the arthavadas) should be interpreted as forming part of a vidhi-vakya (injunction) or be rejected altogether. Even those expressions which give reasons for the ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... Col. Sam N. Wood as an organizer and worker. We owe everything to Wood, and he is really a thoroughly noble, good fellow, and a hero. He is a short, rather thick set, somewhat awkward, and "slouchy" man, extremely careless in his dress, blunt and abrupt in his manner, with a queer inexpressive face, little blue eyes which can look dull or flash fire or twinkle with the wickedest fun. He is so witty, sarcastic, and cutting, that he is a terrible foe, and will put the laugh even on his best friends. The son of a Quaker ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... buck-bean is Menyanthis trifoliata, and mugwort is Artemesia Judaica; that, having lost the properties of hyssop known to Solomon, we regain our superiority over that learned Hebrew by christening it Gratiola officinalis. The sexes must not be taught in one room to discard such ugly and inexpressive terms as snow-drop, meadow-sweet, heart's-ease, fever-few, cowslip, etc., and learn to know the cowslip as Primula veris—by class, Pentandria monogynia; and the buttercup as Ranunculus acnis—Polyandria ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... as vacant a countenance as so clever a man could very well wear. It was indeed a part of Osmond's cleverness that he could look consummately uncompromised. His present appearance, however, was not a confession of disappointment; it was simply a part of Osmond's habitual system, which was to be inexpressive exactly in proportion as he was really intent. He had been intent on this prize from the first; but he had never allowed his eagerness to irradiate his refined face. He had treated his possible son-in-law as he treated every one—with an air of being ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... winter, driven home by the severity of the weather, he would sit for days together moping in the chimney-corner, without taking the least notice of what was passing around him. Brian never mentioned this boy—who had a strong, active figure; a handsome, but very inexpressive face—without a deep sigh; and I feel certain that half his own dejection was occasioned by the mental aberration of ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... menace of night; Then a long, lonely, leaden mere Backed by a desolate fell As by a spectral battlement; and then, Low-brooding, interpenetrating all, A vast, grey, listless, inexpressive sky, So beggared, so incredibly bereft Of starlight and the song of racing worlds It might have bellied down upon the Void Where as in terror Light was ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... de Nesville as one beautifully bound first volume of a human document can be from another equally attractive. "First volume of a human document" isn't inexpressive of a young girl, is it? Heaven knows what this one may be by the time the second and third volumes are ready for publication; but at present one turns over the leaves with pleased surprise. There's something original and charming in each ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... his visit to the cemetery remained undefined save as a final effort of escape from his wife's inexpressive acceptance of his shame. It seemed to him that as long as he could keep himself alive to that shame he would not wholly have succumbed to its consequences. His chief fear was that he should become the creature of his act. His wife's indifference degraded him; it seemed to put ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... dampers, and leave the pianoforte undamped, a register approved of by Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach, who regarded the undamped pianoforte as the more agreeable for improvising.. He appears, however, to have known but little of the capabilities of the instrument, which seemed to him coarse and inexpressive beside his favorite clavichord. Stein appears to have made use of the "una corda" shift. Probably by knee-pedals, subsequently by foot-pedals, the following effects were ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... reader, tarry here, nor miss The law of Minneapolis. There was a carpenter called Brown, A citizen of that great town, Who stood his "inexpressive she" A dollar's worth of comedy. Was it a Gaiety burlesque, Or labour of Norwegian desk? Or did they spout in stagey tones Morality by H. A. Jones? Or tear romance to rags and set it In heavy platitudes by Pettit? I know not, ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams
... from Norman, was equally inexpressive of the almost incredulous gratitude and tenderness of ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... romancing in the shadow of a provincial palazzo? On the face of the matter, I know, there is often no very salient peg to hang a romance on. A sort of dusky blankness invests the establishment, which has often a rather imbecile old age. But a hundred brooding secrets lurk in this inexpressive mask, and the Chigi Palace did duty for me in the suggestive twilight as the most haunted of houses. Its basement walls sloped outward like the beginning of a pyramid, and its lower windows were covered ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... the slow or quick death, to prolong the toiling, bitter existence—pilgrims of eternal hope; born in the belief, in the sane and wholesome creed that, no matter what the horror is, no matter what the burden's weight must be, one must live! It takes a great deal to wake in these inexpressive, indifferent faces illumination of interest. At what should ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... Anne's wooden, inexpressive countenance was a great comfort to Sir Charles, in some moods. Though she was clever enough, she did not have that superfluity of sympathy and responsiveness that makes one go away regretting one ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... clerk, vibratingly restless with no actual promise of being penetrating, he was of that indeterminate type which never seems to acquire a personality of its own. The small and bony and steel-blue face was as neutral as the spare and reticent figure that sat before a bald table in a bald room as inexpressive and reticent as its occupant. Copeland was not only unknown outside the Department; he was, in a way, unknown in his ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... at him, but found it more comfortable to examine the inexpressive gravel path. "But now you have something to think of besides ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... corner of her envelope, the light from a window on the stairs falling on the jewel-like polish of her hair, when Girlie opened the door of the "parlor" and came out into the hall. Girlie saw her and half-closed the door. Her lazy eyes, as reflective and receptive and inexpressive as small meadow pools under a summer sky, rested upon Sheila. In the parlor a pleasant ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... was a slight man, of middle height, with very respectable iron-grey hair that stood almost upright upon his head, but with a poor, inexpressive, thin face below it. He was given to bowing a good deal, rubbing his hands together, smiling courteously, and to the making of many civil little speeches; but his strength as a leading man in Warminster lay in his hair, and in the suit of orderly well-brushed ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... nights, when she came up to the attic cold and hungry, with a tempest raging in her young breast, Emily's stare seemed so vacant, her sawdust legs and arms so inexpressive, that Sara lost all control over herself. There was nobody but Emily—no one in the ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... once," said the Duke, and he smiled as he spoke with a peculiarly sweet expression, which would at times come across his generally inexpressive face,—"I remember once that some First Minister of the Crown gave evidence as to the amount of his salary, saying that his place entailed upon him expenses higher than his stipend would defray. I begin to think that my ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... In the dole That haunts the west wind, in the joyous roll Of Arethusan fountains, or among The wastes where Ozymandias the strong Lies in colossal ruin, thy control Speaks in the wedded rhyme. Thy spirit gave A fragrance to all Nature, and a tone To inexpressive Silence. Each apart— Earth, Air and Ocean—claims thee as its own, The twain that bred thee, and the panting wave That clasped thee ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... considered, is as injudicious as illogical. In what does expression consist but in form and color? It is one of the ends which these accomplish, and may be itself an attribute of both. Color may be expressive or inexpressive, like music; form expressive or inexpressive, like words; but expression by itself cannot exist; so that to divide painting into color, form, and expression, is precisely as rational as to divide music into notes, words, and expression. Color ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... sigh at an envelope which lay upon her dressing-table. Yes, there lay Willoughby, curt, inexpressive, perpetually jocular, robbing a whole continent of mystery, enquiring after his daughter's manners and morals—hoping she wasn't a bore, and bidding them pack her off to him on board the very next ship if she were—and then grateful and affectionate with suppressed ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... these nights, when she came up to the garret cold, hungry, tired, and with a tempest raging in her small breast, Emily's stare seemed so vacant, her sawdust legs and arms so limp and inexpressive, that Sara lost all control ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... his ease than Val, in spite of the disadvantage of his evening dress, Lawrence stood looking down at him with brilliant inexpressive eyes. "Is it your own idea that I stayed on at Wanhope to make love ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... passionate crying. 'Oh, dunna, dunna!' she sobbed. So she did always at any mention of helpless suffering, flinging herself down in wild rebellion and abandonment so that epilepsy had been suspected. But it was not epilepsy. It was pity. She, in her inexpressive, childish way, shared with the love-martyr of Galilee the heartrending capacity for imaginative sympathy. In common with Him and others of her kind, she was not only acquainted with grief, but reviled and ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... were at the antipodes, and they were separated no less by their similarities than by their differences. Their wistful and inexpressive love for each other was as much of a blight upon them as their inherent antagonism. The sun went down that bleak Christmas night on a house divided openly ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... Carroll as singularly inexpressive, but he made an effort to gather his courage when his companion broke off with ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... gave him being—a father he revered, and whose memory he cherished. The filial and hereditary hatred was in his heart. The feeling was mutual. Both knew it, and the cold, passive eye, and relaxed, inexpressive features but bespoke the subdued, not the extinguished passion. Chillie McIntosh is only one-fourth Indian in blood. Hopothlayohola is a full-blooded Indian. His features are coarse and striking. His high forehead and prominent brow indicate intellect, and his large compressed ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... pleasure in being addressed by one of his own guests. Arnold drew a little away and looked across the banks of roses. There was something fascinating to him in the unheard conversation of Sabatini and Starling, on the opposite side of the table. Everything they said was in an undertone and the inexpressive faces of the two men gave no indication as to the nature of their conversation. Yet the sense of something mysterious in this house and among these guests was growing all the time ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... like a man who finds himself much against his will in doubtful company. He accepted ungraciously the cup handed to him by Mrs Fyne, took an unwilling sip or two and put it down as if there were some moral contamination in the coffee of these "swells." Between whiles he directed mysteriously inexpressive glances at little Fyne, who, I gather, had no breakfast that morning at all. Neither had the girl. She never moved her hands from her lap till her appointed guardian got up, leaving his cup ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Korin, towards the end of the Ming period, is about as empty as Velasquez and more brilliant than Frans Hals. The eighteenth century, one inclines to believe, was the same everywhere. Stylistic obsession and the taste for material beauty ended in mechanical prettiness, altogether inexpressive or sentimental. In both hemispheres painting was reduced to a formula—a formula for ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... criticism was more undeserved than usual, for a look of gentle happiness softened and inspired her naturally plain features, and lent an unwonted tender grace to a somewhat inexpressive figure. ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... essentially coarse and boorish and insensitive as it is beneath all its powdered preciosity, that wearies one with Strauss's "Musical Comedy"; or the hybrid, lame, tasteless form of "Ariadne auf Naxos" that turns one against that little monstrosity. It is the generally inexpressive and insufficient music in which Strauss has vested them. The music of "Salome," for instance, is not even commensurable with Wilde's drama. It was the evacuation of an obsessive desire, the revulsion from a pitiless ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... part, we cannot deny to music an emotional content of some kind. I would go farther, and assert that, while a merely mechanical musician may set inappropriate melodies to words, and render music inexpressive of character, what constitutes a musical dramatist is the conscious intention of fitting to the words of his libretto such melody as shall interpret character, and the power ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... fine gentleman, and modelled himself as much as he dared upon the carriage of his master, when his master was not by, and, like the most of such copying apes, he overdid the part. His face was curiously unpleasant, long and yellowish white and inexpressive, with drooping eyelids masking pale, shifty eyes, with a drooping, ungainly nose, and a mouth that seemed like ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... ready argument of the reductio ad absurdum. Without insisting, for example, upon the impossibility of having a speech delivered by one who is actually blind, and deaf, and dumb, we need only imagine here its utterance, by some wall-eyed stammerer, who has a visage about as wooden and inexpressive as the figure-head of a merchantman. Occasionally, it is true, physical defects have been actually conquered, individual peculiarities have been in a great measure counteracted, by rhetorical artifice, or ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... of night; Then a long, lonely, leaden mere Backed by a desolate fell, As by a spectral battlement; and then, Low-brooding, interpenetrating all, A vast, gray, listless, inexpressive sky, So beggared, so incredibly bereft Of starlight and the song of racing worlds, It might have bellied down upon the Void Where as in terror Light was ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... the narrowness of his forehead up to its summit widening over the eyebrows, which were shaggy and met, pointing downwards over the bridge of the nose, imperfectly shading with their sable outline the cold and inexpressive eyes; the short, rough beard, irregularly spread over the angular and bony outline of the mouth—every feature of this man's dreadful countenance made me shudder, and strange notions crossed my mind about the mysterious affinities between man and ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... noise; nothing is heard, as they glide by, but a froufrou of silken stuffs. I find them all pleasant to look upon; their dollish air has the gift of pleasing me now, and I fancy I have discovered what it is that gives it to them: it is not only their round inexpressive faces with eyebrows far removed from the eyelids, but the excessive amplitude of their dress. With those huge sleeves, it might be supposed they have neither back nor shoulders; their delicate figures are lost in these wide ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... lamp, was a small-headed, grey-haired gentleman with a wrinkled face and sunken brown eyes. Years of business experience, mitigated only by such exercise as the game of poker affords, had intensified an instinctive inexpressiveness. Under the most solitary circumstances old Grammont was still inexpressive, and the face that stared at the ceiling of his cabin and the problem of his daughter might have been the face of a pickled head in a museum, for any indication it betrayed of the flow of thought within. He lay on his back and ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... between us, and then her brother-in-law leading her down to dinner, the evening passed by with politeness on both sides. Adela did not appear to heed her presence one way or the other. But then of late she had been very inexpressive. ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... tinged his shaven crown with grey, his forehead was broad and square, and rose straight beneath the silk cap he wore in winter. His features were rather drawn out, without a single wrinkle, and devoid of any expression that showed emotion, the jaw-bone narrow and sharp, and the eyes as inexpressive and motionless as the rest of the face, but with a cold, penetrating ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... imprisoned in the labyrinths of hair; in others the eyes deep with feeling or hard with gemlike brilliancy have caught it, or the lips that tell and hide so much, or the nostrils quivering with momentary emotion. Beauty, inexpressive of inner meaning, must, we conceive, have had but slight attraction for him. We do not find that he drew "a fair naked body" for the sake of its carnal charm; his hasty studies of the nude are often faulty, mere memoranda of attitude and gesture. The human form ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... same time, I am lucky enough to possess certain advantages. I have, for instance, managed to preserve the ability to speak dialect in spite of all the efforts of my pastors and masters to make me talk the stereotyped, comparatively inexpressive compromise which goes by the name of King's English. Tony is hard of hearing, catches the meaning of dialect far quicker than that of standard English, and I notice that the damn'd spot sir seldom blots our conversation when it is carried on in dialect. Finally there ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... looked narrowly at the house. He recollected that a well-known lawyer lived there. What could the rough lieutenant want with him? He jumped at a conclusion, which was not far from the truth; still his countenance wore its usual calm and inexpressive look. ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... was associated the idea of restraint. Moreover, Gertrude, though inferior in beauty, was yet a pretty contrast to her rival. Her light hair fell in silken ringlets down her shoulders, her blue eyes were gentle though inexpressive, and her healthy cheeks were like opening rosebuds. He had already become accustomed to the dangerous experiment of resisting his own inward convictions; and this new impulse to ambition, combined with the strong temptation of variety in love, met ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... skies made in this manner, and Fra Damiano was very successful in thus suggesting the texture of much veined and coloured marble and of rocks, but directly the human figure enters into the design these expedients are felt to be insufficient and inexpressive, and inner lines have perforce to be introduced. The opposite extreme is such work as the panels by the brothers Caniana in the Colleoni Chapel at Bergamo, in which the composition and drawing of the figures recall the designs of the Caracci, and the ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... nurtured mind. He had early distinguished himself at Oxford by his scornful attitude towards democracy. There was something that appealed to the imagination in his fine antagonism to the crowd—on the one hand, was the brilliant young nobleman, picturesquely alone; on the other, the ugly, inexpressive multitude, dressed inelegantly in shop-clothes, under-educated, under-fed, envious, base, and with a wicked disinclination for work and a wicked appetite for the good things it could so rarely ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... When the three men came into the office the boy dropped his chair to the floor and stared at Ed who stared back at him. It was as though a contest of some sort went on between them. A tall neatly-dressed woman, with a brisk manner and pale, inexpressive, hard blue eyes, stood back of a little combined desk and cigar case at the end of the room, and as the three walked toward her she looked from Ed to the sullen-faced boy and then again at Ed. Sam concluded she was a woman bent on ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... in the forests, become only a very little clearer; and that, on the other hand, the yellow Indians of the Montana, after being several years in the Puna, still retain their characteristic tint. The women are, on the whole, extremely ugly, with round, inexpressive faces. Their hands and ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... absurd little inexpressive word on paper, but Anne made a song of it on two notes, combining astonishment with a sincerity that was absolutely final. If, after that, Jervaise had dared to say, "Are you sure?" I believe I should ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... came to me to set him to copy Scripture maps, and draw small illustrations of any Biblical scene that occurred in the lesson of the day. I have a book full of his childish fancies now, all elaborately colored on week-days—"Joseph and his Brethren" in gaudy turbans, and wonderfully inexpressive countenances, reminding me of Flurry's dolls; the queen of Sheba, coming before Solomon, in a marvelous green tiara and yellow garments; a headless Goliath, expressed with a painful degree of detail, more fit for the Wirtz Gallery ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... than that of any other modern Englishman. He was neither super-eloquent like Mr. Ruskin nor a Germanised Jeremy like Carlyle; he was not marmoreally emphatic as Landor was, nor was he slovenly and inexpressive as was the great Sir Walter; he neither dallied with antithesis like Macaulay nor rioted in verbal vulgarisms with Dickens; he abstained from technology and what may be called Lord-Burleighism ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... movements in mystery. When she ceased to write he had simply concluded that, like himself, she felt the mockery of trying to keep up a sort of distant, semi-fraternal relation, marked by the occasional interchange of inexpressive letters. The inextricable mingling of thought and sensation which made the peculiar closeness of their union could never, to such direct and passionate natures, be replaced by the pretense of a temperate friendship. Feeling thus himself, and instinctively assuming the same ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... Literary Gazette, gave a personal description which was not sufficiently flattering, and roused the lady's indignant comments. It dared to state that she was "short, with a broad face, blue, inexpressive eyes, and seemed, if such a thing may be named, about forty years of age." Imagine the sensations this paragraph produced! She at once retorted, exclaiming in mock earnest, "I appeal! I appeal to the Titian of his age and country—I appeal to you, Sir Thomas Lawrence. Would ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... man," she mused, glancing at his blank, inexpressive features, "happens to be a detective, and knows who I am, he may think I will lead him directly to Colonel Weatherby, whom he may then arrest. Gran'pa Jim is innocent, of course, but I know he doesn't wish to be arrested, because he left Beverly suddenly to avoid it. And," ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... Glendower and laid his hand heavily upon his arm. At that moment a vivid and lengthened flash of lightning shot through the ruined arch, and gave to Crauford's countenance a lustre which Glendower almost started to behold. The face, usually so smooth, calm, bright in complexion, and almost inexpressive from its extreme composure, now agitated by the excitement of the moment, and tinged by the ghastly light of the skies, became literally fearful. The cold blue eye glared out from its socket; the lips blanched, and, parting in act to speak, ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... first opportunity, to introduce the name of Jentham and observe what effect it had on the bishop. With these little plans in his mind the chaplain crept about the tea-table like a tame cat, and handed round cake and bread with his most winning smile. His pale face was even more inexpressive than usual, and none could have guessed, from outward appearance, his malicious intents—least of all the trio he was with. They were too upright themselves to ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... state of the roads), it is impossible to say. As it was my only reply was by a glance, which, if it failed to convince her that I pitied her with a depth and intensity which approached alarmingly near the kindred emotion, love, must have been singularly inexpressive. And the evening came to an end, as all evenings, however long, are sure to do at last; and in due course I went to bed, but not to sleep, for Clara Saville and her forebodings ran riot in my brain, and effectually banished the ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... sits, his hand holding a glove resting negligently over the back of a chair. He faces the spectator, on his head a long, pointed black hat with a wide brim. His collar is white. A shadow covers the face above the eyes. These are rather melancholy, inexpressive; the flesh tints are anaemic, almost morbid. We are far away from the Vermeer of the Milkmaid and the Letter. There is something disquieting in this portrait, but it is a ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the acuteness of his agony in the strict form of a regular fugue; but here, as everywhere else in the Requiem, feeling triumphs over the artistic sense; and by a chromatic change, of which none but a Mozart or a Bach would have dreamed, the inexpressive formality of the counter-subject is altered into a passionate appeal for mercy. In no other work of Mozart known to me does he ever become hysterical, and in the Requiem only once, towards the end of ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... Columbus, when he was discovering America, knew where he was going. When Francisco does not know what the language (English) hurled at him means he has a far-away look, and may be listening to the angels sing, for he is plaintive and inexpressive. He looks so sorry that Americans cannot speak their own language as he speaks English! But there are phrases delivered by Americans that he understands, such as, "Blankety, blank, blank—you all come here." Francisco does not go there, but with humble step elsewhere, affecting ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... at her husband. To her surprise his usually sensitive face did not show her what was passing in his mind. Indeed she thought it looked peculiarly inexpressive as he replied: ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... to these great transitions with as little inward change as possible. Her soul was the soul of the Clarks, tricked out with good clothes and the manners and habits of the rich. Addie, it seemed, had at last arrived at her paradise in the person of her daughter, but it was a pale and inexpressive Addie, who made ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... and then down the street, as if waiting the arrival of a victim upon whom to pronounce one of his awful judgments. Felsh is a different species of person, being a short, stunted man, with a flat, inexpressive face. He has very much the appearance of a man who had been clumsily thrown together for any purpose future circumstances might require. Between these worthies and one Hanz Von Vickeinsteighner there has long existed a business connection, which ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... since at the next moment the imaginative current would as likely as not have faced about and might be making in the opposite direction; and on the other side is pure utility, which would deprive the work of all inherent ideality, and render it inexpressive of anything in man save his necessities. War, for instance, is an art when, having set itself an ideal end, it devises means of attaining it; but this ideal end has for its chief basis some failure in politics and morals. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... freedom, not even English with any marked propriety. What he uttered was not so much well said, as excellently acted: so we may hear every day the inexpressive language of a poorly written drama assume character and colour in the hands of a good player. No man had more of the vis comica in private life; he played no character on the stage as he could play himself among his friends. It was one of his special charms; now when the voice is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which the movements are thus rendered less conspicuous. When, however, they raise their eyebrows their foreheads become, as with us, transversely wrinkled. In comparison with man, their faces are inexpressive, chiefly owing to their not frowning under any emotion of the mind—that is, as far as I have been able to observe, and I carefully attended to this point. Frowning, which is one of the most important of all the expressions in man, is due to the contraction of the corrugators by ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... western turret, just as it waved in May, and so, with his two wooden legs projecting at right angles to his body, sat alone, on the same bench, the lone old pensioner. I seemed to have been sleeping for three months. I felt sad, and knew not why. How ideal is the reality of life! and the inexpressive cause of grief is ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... that—as he had learned in the Mission garden at St. Augustine—such depths of feeling could coexist with such absence of imagination. But he remembered how, even then, she had surprised him by dropping back to inexpressive girlishness as soon as her conscience had been eased of its burden; and he saw that she would probably go through life dealing to the best of her ability with each experience as it came, but never anticipating any by so much ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... thickness is a very dead and inexpressive thing compared with one varied and stressed at certain points. If you observe any of the boundaries in nature we use a line to express, you will notice some points are accentuated, attract the attention, more than ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed |
