"Unexplainable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we meet people who antagonize us the moment a glance or a handshake is exchanged, while our inner consciousness offers no explanation for the reasonless antipathy; on the other hand Fate brings us sometimes in contact with personalities which at once appeal to a sixth sense which is unexplainable and indefinable, but which seems to comprehend more than the combined five educated and trained sensibilities. What is that sixth sense? Who can tell? I only know that in one moment I felt as if I had known the princess all ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... of a prospect of their being paid, notwithstanding importuners had frequently intimated that a place called the gaol was not far distant, and that the squire's office was within a stone's throw of "the corner." Colonel M'Carstrow, reports say, had some years ago got a deal of money by an unexplainable hocus pocus, but it was well nigh gone in gambling, and now he was keeping brothel society and rioting away his life faster than the race-horses he had formerly kept on the course ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... narrative—that I should be pleased to believe, even if I could not;—that I should believe for your sake, Clifford, if for no other reason. Honestly, after all you have said and shown—with all the unexplained and perhaps unexplainable particulars before me, making the appearances so much against her—I can not think your wife guilty. I should be sorry ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... son, sat up long after Miss Sutcliff and the one serving maid the house boasted had gone to bed, and when, in time, he, too, retired to his room, the soaked mattress did its work in the most effectual manner. Whimpering like a hurt child over the unexplained and apparently unexplainable accident, the old man suffered his son to lead him off to his own room; and there, unable to rest on the harder mattress, and suffering agonies of pain, he lay for a long time before the door swung open, the glimmer of a bedroom candle tempered the darkness ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... that we cannot explain to one that we fully understand. Education of any kind consists more in knowing when to say "I don't know and no one else knows either" than to attempt a foolish explanation of an unexplainable thing. ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... Percy Darrow reflected that, were it not for the terror of these unexplainable hours, the prisoners within or their friends without could assail their confines boldly and formidably, even with dynamite, and none would be the wiser if only none happened to be within actual visual range of the operations. He himself quite coolly used the iron ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... a projecting declivity of the western side of this beautiful glen, whose banks, although they presented, as they opened and widened to the north, a regular outline, were, nevertheless, varied in their actual surface by occasional deviations and sinuosities, arising as well from the unexplainable curvatures of its original structure, as from the narrow, deep ravines, that had been worn by the autumn floods and perennial streamlets from the adjacent hills. In like manner the surface of the bed of the valley was subject to frequent inequalities, produced, perhaps, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... good. It was a fascinating spectacle, to be studied or observed and rejoiced in as a spectacle. When I look back now on the shabby, poorly-lighted, low-ceiled room to which he led me "for fun," the absolutely black or brown girls with their white teeth and shiny eyes, the unexplainable, unintelligible love of rhythm and the dance displayed, the beating of a drum, the sinuous, winding motions of the body, I am grateful to him. He released my mind, broadened my view, lengthened my perspective. For as I sat with him, watching him beat his drum ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... in those parts of it which are practically unknown to the white man. Why, even here, close at hand, among our neighbours the Zulus, there have been happenings—well authenticated, mind you—that are absolutely unexplainable by any knowledge that we whites possess. But I think I have prosed enough for one sitting, and it is growing late—one o'clock, as I am a living sinner!—and you must be growing tired. Do you wonder why I have told you all these things? Well, it is because ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... Captain Cy was to be taken home. He was up and about, had been out for several short walks, and was very nearly his own self again. He was in good spirits, too, at times, but had fits of seeming depression which, under the circumstances, were unexplainable. The doctor thought they were due to his recent illness ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sudden and unexplainable sense of disaster caused McKnutt to look round. One of his gunners lay quite still on the floor of the tank, his back against the engine, and a stream of blood trickling down his face. The Corporal ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... newspapers and magazines too, had exiled himself to a few city blocks. And as the years flowed by, that self exile had become a prison, an intangible, impassable wall bounded by four city blocks by three. Beyond them lay utter, unexplainable terror. Beyond them he ...
— The Street That Wasn't There • Clifford Donald Simak
... might say to it. A small roll of manuscript in his hand led him soon to confess that a new story was already begun; but this communication was made in the utmost confidence, as if to account for any otherwise unexplainable absences, physically or mentally, from our society, which might occur. But there were no gaps during that autumn afternoon of return to Gad's Hill. He told us how summer had brought him no vacation this year, and only two days of recreation. One of those, he said, was spent ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... seized again with an unexplainable mirth, "here's some young folks come out to see the place an' I want you to know 'em. Mr. Rivers, this is m' wife, Kitty, and—lessee, miss, I don't rightly ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... to start for Greece the night after our decision. Meanwhile, I was anxious to explain the unexplainable to Brigit and Monny, and secure the party for Sir Marcus Lark's alleged dahabeah, which turned out to be one of Cook's old boats bought and newly decorated. Both my tasks would be difficult. I had to hide the secret reason for selling myself to the financier, and at the ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... gazed for some moments at the object before him. He had not known that men experienced these curiously unexplainable emotions at such times. He kept a strong ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... what lay behind her unexplainable actions, Val could only stand and listen. "We did have some errands. Of course, ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... those sudden and unexplainable lulls that always occur in general drawing-room conversations, Diotti turned to Mrs. Llewellyn and whispered: "Who is the charming young ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... making it more taut and rigid than it could be by the most careful stretching. Though the layman would not suspect it, this wash alone costs about $150 a machine. The seaplanes too—or hydroaeroplanes as purists call them—present a curious illustration of unexpected and, it would seem, unexplainable expense. Where the flyer over land has two bicycle wheels on which to land, the flyer over the sea has two flat-bottomed boats or pontoons. These cost from $1000 to $1200 and look as though they ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... of his attempt to put his unborn poem into words gave him less thought to-day than it had after its first occurrence; there were other phases of last night's experience weirder and more unexplainable still. Paramount, of course, was the vision or dream—which would seem to have been induced by some magnetic property possessed and exerted by Weir. Such things do not occur without cause, and he was not ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... presence lifted him to a higher plane, and gave a greater capacity for enjoyment, and sometimes simply an arch smile or an unexpected tone set his nerves vibrating in a manner as delightful as it was unexplainable by any past experience that he could recall. She was a good walker and horsewoman, and as their acquaintance ripened he began to ask permission to join her in her rides and rambles. She assented without the slightest ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... completed this part of his statement, but only the coroner found his voice. "Most remarkable evidence," he ejaculated. "Most extraordinary evidence. I have never heard anything so obviously sincere and at the same time so altogether unexplainable." ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... This unexplainable something which sustains the soul at its foundation, as it were, is the hardest of all to lose, and that which the soul endeavours the most strenuously to retain; for as it is too delicate, so it appears the more divine and necessary: it would consent willingly to be deprived ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... Equally unexplainable was the way in which these strange moods, these dim flashes, were subtly bound up with Veronica. It was Veronica that seemed to inspire these feelings, and similarly, it was these feelings that ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... continent. The air is remarkably pure and dry. Siccity, indeed, is its distinguishing feature. That the climate is due to geographical and meteorological conditions cannot be doubted, but the effects are unexplainable by any ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... and the fact that, in spite of his condition, he won the race, had not taken the sting away. She had thought the Ramblin' Kid was real—rough and crude, perhaps, but all man, rugged-hearted and honest. Sometimes she wondered if the queer unexplainable antagonism between herself and the sensitive young cowboy had not, in a measure, been responsible for his sudden moral breaking down. The thought caused her to lose some of that frivolity that inspired the dance and the wild flirtations she carried on that ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... with a modesty worthy of acknowledgment, his total ignorance concerning the manner in which certain forms of life, especially the higher ones, originated. The origin of higher species without the supposition of a descent is to him unexplainable, because the individuals of these species are, in their first development of life, so dependent on the mother. Furthermore, he points out the fact that in early periods of the earth the organic forming power which ruled, must have been a higher one than it is at the present time; ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... clear. That old hunting for the "prescription," which had puzzled him at the time, was explained now. There was the "prescription"—the codicil! Dr. West had had it in his hand when disturbed in that room by a stranger: he had flung it back in the bureau in his hurry; pushed it back: and by some unexplainable means, he must have pushed it too far out of sight. And there it had lain until now, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Still with unexplainable amiability the Superintendent whirled back into place in her pivot-chair and with her left hand which had all this time been rummaging busily in a lower desk drawer proffered Rae Malgregor ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... of mentor nettled her, his attitude seemed to her priggish and dictatorial, and as the sun disappearing behind a sudden cloud, so her childish merriment quickly gave place to a feeling of unexplainable disappointment. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... making their escape, a band of antelope were sighted sunning themselves amongst the sand dunes a mile below; attracted by the shooting, they were standing at attention. Now when an antelope scents danger, he has an unreasonable and unexplainable desire to reach high ground, where he can observe and be observed—at a distance. Once this conclusion has been reached, he allows nothing to stop him, not even recently built wire fences or man himself, and like the cat despises water except ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... dim light of the hall he was standing with the instrument in his hands, clutching it with the stupidity of a man who has been struck by an unexpected and unexplainable missile. His face had gone to a grayish white, and his hands trembled as he set the receiver on the hook. His eyes were bulging from emotion and he kept wetting his lips as he ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... weak and the patient suffers much dyspnea, myocarditis should be known to be present with the endocarditis. If there is a diastolic murmur, there can be no question of serious endocarditis having occurred. Unexplainable palpation during acute illness liar been thought to be a ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... foliage and the nuts were very remarkable and pertained to characters of these two trees. Such a cross to my mind would be wholly unexplainable excepting on the ground recently brought out by Loeb and his followers in crossing the lower forms of animal life and finding that the cell membrane of the egg, if destroyed, will allow of very wide fertilization subsequently ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... unexplainable things about the case. First, how came he on the Scotch Express, which leaves at six, and does not stop at Pegram? Second, the ticket examiners at the terminus would have turned him out if he showed his season ticket; and all the tickets sold for the ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... Nea, Odin thought. A scientist, always. Anything unexplainable must be immediately attached to a theory—whether the theory were right or wrong. Just as long as there was an explanation to hang upon a phenomenon she was happy enough. She might blithely think up a new theory ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... can only wait, and learn. As a Spanish naval officer he may have obtained some knowledge of this coast—but why he should have deliberately denied the possession of such information is unexplainable at present. I shall watch him closely, and have told you these facts merely to put you on guard. I know you to be a gentleman, Carlyle, even though you are temporarily a servant, and I feel convinced I can trust ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... Wild said that a puzzling and unexplainable feature of these battlefields was that so many of the dead were found lying on their backs with rigid arms stretched straight ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... her roving heart gone out to this attractive scamp who did not want her love or care for it? She did not know. The thing was as unexplainable as it was inescapable. All the training of her life had shaped her to other ends. Lady Farquhar would explain it as a glamour cast by a foolish girl's fancy. But Moya knew the tide of feeling which raced through her was born not of fancy but of ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... much honor to ask my opinion. But since you wish to know what I think, I consider it only justice to say that it would be easier for an unprejudiced mind to believe that Mr. Barrows had a secret enemy, or that his death was owing to some peculiar and perhaps unexplainable accident, than that he should seek it himself, having, as he did, every ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... self-interest side by side with introspective revery, where stray priests nodded in among the traders,—many-peopled India surged in miniature between the four hot walls and through the passage to the overflowing street; changeable and unexplainable, in ever-moving flux, but more conservative in spite of it than the very rocks she rests on—India who is sister to Aholibah and ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... real than most men you knew—except grandfather, of course. There was something unexplainable in the man and his work that rang true—something that was so wholesome and sound. He wasn't like old Hawkins, the grocer—he'd as lief give you a rotten apple as not if he could smuggle it into the bag without you seeing him; and Kline the candy-man sometimes sold you old hard stuff ...
— The Long Ago • Jacob William Wright
... Clifford's reticence, partly by the unexplainable thaw in the frigidity of Rue Barree. At their frequent encounters, when she, tripping along the rue de Seine, with music-roll and big straw hat would pass Clifford and his familiars steering an easterly course to the Cafe Vachette, and at the respectful uncovering ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... fakirs and mock-magicians? For that there are two reasons. One is that there are multitudes of Indians who are thieves and liars, who know nothing and seek to conceal their ignorance beneath a cloak of deceit and trickery. The other is, that men are so deep in delusion, that when they do see the unexplainable they seek to explain it away. Whereas the truth is that there are natural laws which, if understood by all, would at once make all men masters of ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... an organization, created by my father, to make use of people who can do things ordinarily impossible, and probably unexplainable, but which exist nevertheless. There are more talents than Father has gathered, of course. But what good are their gifts to them? No good at all! They're considered freaks. So Father gathered them together as he found them. First, of course, he needed capital. So he used them to ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... of the visitor from Planet X—a visitor in the form of energy. But there are factions at work determined to snatch the energy, which Tom has named Exman, from the young scientist-inventor's grasp. First, a series of unexplainable, devastating earthquakes threaten to destroy a good portion of the earth, and Tom suspects the Brungarian rebels who obviously would like to capture Exman and use the space visitor to further ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... grown conscious of the fact that I was wandering about in a strange house, and that, apparently, I was alone in it. The silence of the place began to try my nerves, and in a sudden, unexplainable panic I started for the open street. But as I turned, I saw a man sitting on a bench, which the curve of the balustrade had hidden from me. His eyes were shut, ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis
... the verge of laughing speech, something held him back, some unexplainable instinct, making itself known in a thrill that went from his feet to his head; he could feel the roots of his hair tingle. The newcomer went quickly, with catlike tread, toward the girl. Fascinated he stood, wanting to ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... to this last possibility there had been certain symptoms recently observed which might well be due to volcanic action. Smoke had floated above the mountain and once the country folk passing near had heard subterranean noises, unexplainable rumblings. A glow in the sky had crowned the ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... head toward the last speaker—whom I decided, for some unexplainable reason, must be Hephzy—and to tell her that of course I wasn't dead, and then all faded away and there was ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... reached its meridian in the minds of the troops, and they were ever expecting to hear of some new achievement or brilliant victory by this strange, silent, and mysterious man. The very mystery of his movements, his unexplainable absence and sudden reappearance at unexpected points, his audacity in the face of the enemy, his seeming recklessness, gave unbounded confidence to the army. The men began to feel safe at the very idea of his disappearance and absence. While the thunder ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... could be no denial. She was stubbornly withholding important information from himself as the masquerading husband. She was, therefore, capable of craft and scheming. The jewel mystery was equally suspicious and unexplainable. ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... a dream; it was not madness; it was the truth: she lets her eyes rest upon me at times with the ardent glance of which I have told you. There is in her glance an unexplainable magnetic attraction. It draws me on, it seduces me, and I can not withdraw my gaze from her. On such occasions my eyes must burn, like hers, with a fatal flame, as did those of Amnon when he turned them upon ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... uproar alongside brought him hurriedly on deck—to find his boat full of strange faces. A Customs cutter, in some unaccountable way getting wind of what was in the boat, had unexpectedly "clapt them aboard," collared the man-o'-war's-men for a set of rascally smugglers, and confiscated the unexplainable rum and wine, becoming so fuddled on the latter, which they lost no time in consigning to bond, that one of their number fell into the sea and was with difficulty fished out by Richardson's disgusted gangsmen. [Footnote: Admiralty ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... beautiful, weak where we thought him strong, dull where we thought him brilliant. Take then the vintage of his heart and let him go. As for me, I'm glad some mystery is left in this world. A thousand signs on my roadways are still as unexplainable, as mysterious, and as beguiling as this. And I can close my narrative with no better motto for tired spirits than that of ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... this new and unexplainable activity of Hope Georgia, slowly departed in search of Senator Langdon to make a last desperate attempt to prevent him from meeting this pestilential secretary that was—and ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... English was perfect, though heavy and foreign sounding in an unexplainable way. He repeated his question when the boy did not answer ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... learned that he had been right in his conjectures, and that through some unexplainable blunder one division of the Chilian army had been sent to capture the town already in ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... this way it is its own range-finder. Its bark is almost as dangerous as its bite, for its reports have a brisk, insolent sound like a postman's knock, or a cooper hammering rapidly on an empty keg, and there is an unexplainable mocking sound to the reports, as though the gun were laughing at you. The English Tommies used to call it very aptly the "hyena gun." I found it much less offensive from the rear than when I was with the British, ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... whole world." Its fulfilment requires a wonderful and an alarming increase of those who teach and believe these doctrines; and as they are to work miracles, whereby the world will be deceived, their teachings are to be accompanied by extraordinary phenomena, which will be unexplainable by any of the known laws of science. The spirits of the departed are to be recognized by them as authoritative teachers, who are to be reverenced and obeyed. They will be regarded as communicating with mortals, as unveiling ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... his bed. Something beyond the chilliness was wrong with him, and he did not know what it was. There is no condition so vexatious as an unexplainable lack of ease; and Old Dalton twisted, gathered up his knees, straightened them again, tensed, relaxed, shifted the bedclothes, and busily but vainly cast about for the source ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... crawled all around him and growled his terriblest. For some unexplainable reason it did not work. Cash sat stiff as though he had turned to some insensate metal. From where he sat watching—curious to see what Cash would do—Bud saw him flinch and stiffen as a man does under ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... up the stairs to the studio. Philip made no effort to follow and to explain. What was there to explain? How could he explain that which, to himself, was unbelievable? Besides, the girl had served her purpose. If he could read the mind of one, he could read the minds of all. By some unexplainable miracle, to his ordinary equipment of senses a sixth had been added. As easily as, before that morning, he could look into the face of a fellow-mortal, he now could look into the workings of that fellow-mortal's ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... situation was unchanged. Secret service operatives and soldiers from the Proving Ground had covered, foot by foot, square miles of territory south of the Proving Ground, but without result. Not a single unexplainable thing had been found. Sensitive instruments sent down from the Bureau of Standards, instruments so sensitive that they would detect an electric light burning a mile away, had yielded no results. As a final measure, General Merton had ordered a dozen planes with steel-cylindered ...
— The Great Drought • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... ahead. His mouth was set. He was very pale. He probably realized to a greater extent than any of them what had taken place. It was inconceivable to him that it had taken place, that he himself had been such a fool. He felt like one who has met with some utterly unexplainable and unaccountable accident. He felt as he had done once when, younger, he had stuck his own knife, with which he was whittling, into his eye, to the possible loss of it. It seemed to him as if something had taken place without his volition. He was ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... at him curiously and in some amazement. Now that he looked closely, he could see that, despite his easy loungeful attitude and steady voice, and apparently indifferent look, there was something odd and unexplainable about Halliday: some faintest twitching of his lips, a shade of pallor on his cheek, a hunted look deep at the back of his eyes. Everton tried ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... an unexplainable charm in littleness." He glanced thoughtfully down at the dainty figure beside him, while Rose wondered if it would be possible for her to make a remark to which he could not give a personal application. It was impossible for them to walk on in silence, ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... right foot remains bound. This king causes the earthquakes when he struggles or stirs himself, and he is so strong that in shaking hands with him it is necessary to extend to him a bone, which he crushes in his grasp. For some unexplainable reason the Indians call him King Bernardo, perhaps by confusing him with ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... Pole it was found by his observations that the water was warmer than when flowing in the opposite direction. He took the trouble to have prepared an elaborate set of observations showing this wonderful phenomenon, which would eventually be published. To him these pecularities were unexplainable, and be hoped that the observations would be studied by his hearers, and some explanation found in regard to the thermometric observations of the expedition. He remarked that the mean temperature for the year of the hourly observations was 5 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... officers was peculiarly regrettable, as they could have escaped. Both Dr. Whiteside and Paymaster Mowat had seen the men under their charge leave the ship, the doctor having attended to placing the sick in the boat provided for the purpose, and they then remained in the ship for some unexplainable reason, as testified by witnesses who last saw them, and apparently these two excellent officers were taken down with the ship. Paymaster Johnston got on a raft alongside the ship, but in some way was caught ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... little Pilgrim, in her sudden grief to have forgotten him, became conscious of a new rapture unexplainable in words. She felt his understanding to envelop her little spirit with a soft and clear penetration, and that nothing she did or said could ever be misconceived more. "Will you take me to him?" she said, trembling ...
— A Little Pilgrim - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... her hair were withered and dry, and had lost nearly all their leaves, but this did not prevent her from being charming—so charming that, notwithstanding the strange character of the adventure, and the unexplainable manner in which she had entered my room, I felt not even for a ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... the intended line of testimony, I believe I have assigned a motive for this monstrous crime, which must precipitate the vengeance of the law, in a degree commensurate with its enormity. Time, opportunity, motive, when in full accord, constitute a fatal triad, and the suspicious and unexplainable conduct of the prisoner in various respects, furnishes, in connection with other circumstances of this case, the strongest presumptive evidence of her guilt. These circumstances, far beyond the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... next morning the festivities began. Commissary whisky was provided in abundance. "Sport" (William Harris) furnished music for the occasion, which he extracted from an old fiddle procured from some unexplainable source. The ball opened with a good pull all around from the canteen. Ordinary forms of entertainment and social enjoyment soon became stale and they concluded to try the mazy dance. Our tent was floored ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... words, it was an attempt at recognition, in the objects worshipped, of that missing female element which had always been worshipped, and without which a Creator becomes a misnomer—a meaningless, unexplained, and unexplainable monstrosity. ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... together, and when they took up their residence once more at Berlin the formerly so intimate relations between the two families ceased absolutely. It was about this time that it became known that Princess Charlotte either during her trip to the Orient, or just before she started, had in some unexplainable manner lost the diary in which she had, like so many members of the fair sex, been accustomed to describe her daily impressions, and to the pages of which she was wont to impart sentiments and opinions that she did not venture to ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... tired, hungry, chilled to his heart. The spell of material comfort, even in such company, came upon the young man. They supped together, not much to the advantage of Dr Rider's head, stomach, or temper, on the following morning. The elder told his story of inevitable failure, and strange unexplainable fatality. The younger dropped forth expressions of disappointment and trouble which partly eased his own mind. Thus they spent together the unlovely evening; and perhaps a few such nights would have done as much harm to the young doctor's ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... piece of rotten timber, the gaping hole in the splintered bannister, the dark gleam of the water beneath, told their own story. One long, horrified look was enough for Mary. The others hung over the spot as if it held some unexplainable fascination, pointing out the step which tripped her first, the rusty nail to which still clung a shred of her dress torn out in falling, the jagged splinter that must have been the one which made the gash in ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... at all. He only laughed at her for feeling so "nesh" (that means tender, sensitive—but the word is almost unexplainable to other than Stowbury ears) on the subject. He liked the romance and excitement of secret courtship—men often do; rarely women, unless there is something in them not quite ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... of his manner was so singularly assuring that Pearson, unexplainable as he found him in every other respect, knew that this at least was to be depended upon, and he drew an almost palpable breath of relief. Something actually allured him into approaching what he had never felt it safe to approach before ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sounds unexplainable. Most of the Moslems had finished their noisy ritual ablutions, and at dawn we had been dimly conscious of the strings of camels, mules and donkeys jingling out under the arch beneath us. Yet there was a great din from the courtyard of wild ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... slipped over the edge of the embankment into a dry ditch, where he squatted upon his haunches waiting for the train to depart. The stop out there in the dark night was one of those mysterious stops which trains are prone to make, unexplained and doubtless unexplainable by any other than a higher intelligence which directs the movements of men and rolling stock. There was no town, and not even a switch light. Presently two staccato blasts broke from the engine's whistle, there was a progressive jerking at ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... nothing else but reactions from a life of silent suffering. All the way back to Morteyn he pondered on the strange scene in the turret, the repudiation of Lorraine, the sudden tenderness for himself, and then the apathy, the suppressed anger, the indifference coupled with unexplainable emotion. ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... under some unexplainable impulse Hahmed turned his head slowly, looking across the shoulder of his guest to the door behind, and his eyes glowed like fires in the darkness of night as in the doorway he saw framed the face of her for whom body and soul craved. The face was pale ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... Shawanoe, always referred to the action of the red men at that time as almost unexplainable. They must have known that the youths had friends close by, and that one of them was the young warrior whom they believed to be in league with the Evil One. The footprints which had guided them through the forest told that fact. There were only four Pawnees (one of whom was the warrior ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... to go on saying that as long as they asked him. This was the second visit in two days and he was getting a little tired of it all. Perhaps he should do as prudence dictated and demand to be returned to Nahuatl. Only his odd, unexplainable desire to at least see Hume kept him from making the request they would have ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... about the Italian that held him at bay as though with chains of steel. When Pedro's small glittering eyes were upon him, his own eyes fell. A kick would send him groveling to earth. In some unexplainable way he felt that this cruel creature was his master. He was subdued and held by ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... conscious and the unconscious. Mind is not always wide awake. We recognize what we call the conscious mind as the ruling force in our lives. But how many things I do without conscious attention; how often I find myself deep in an unexplainable mood; how the fragrance of a flower will sometimes turn the tide of a day for me and make me square my shoulders and go at my task with renewed vigor; or a casual glimpse of a face in the street turn my attention away from my errand and settle my mind into a brown study. Usually I am alert ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter |
