"Unspeakable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... partridge left, and two or three other very delicate tit-bits, besides two large slices of cold roast-beef. Glumdalkin had hardly swallowed the last morsel of the wing, and was just thinking about the leg, when, to her unspeakable surprise, the house-door opened, and out came the princess, attended by one of the maids of honor, and followed by Grandmagnificolowsky. The ladies were muffled up in their fur cloaks, and the maid of honor ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... beauty,—then the still plash against the rocks, and the subsidence in murmurs of the retiring wave, with all its gathered treasure of pebbles and shells,—all these sounds and sights of reposeful life suggested unspeakable thoughts and memories that clung to silence. We had not been without so much sorrow in life as does not well afford to dwell on its own images; and we rose to retrace our steps to the measure of the eternal and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... herself with a circle of admirers, and loneliness is an evil with which she never need be afflicted. To say merely that I feel interested in you, would fail to express the degree of admiration with which I regard you; and it would afford me an unspeakable pleasure to hear the history of your life, from those ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... when prophesying before Ahab. It maybe that these narratives describe to us transactions in a world beyond our own, which could only be conveyed to us in figures or in imperfect form. When St. Paul was caught up into the third heaven, he "heard unspeakable things" which it was not possible for him to utter—the medium of expression was wanting. Divine or mysterious things have, then, to be described in peculiar language which is not always easy to understand. ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... everything that we are to-day, unless by some strong effort of repentance and change we break the fatal continuity, and make a new beginning by God's grace. But let us lay to heart this, as a very solemn truth which lifts up into mystical and unspeakable importance the things that men idly call trifles, that life is one continuous whole, a march towards a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... broke through the clouds of oppression, and for even a brief period shone upon the martyr race, its marvellous development under persecution and in despite of unspeakable suffering at once stood revealed. During these occasional breaks in the darkness, women appeared whose erudition was so profound as to earn special mention. As was said above, the first names of women distinguished for beauty and intellect come down to us from the ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... double. And as among all beings he alone partakes of the corruptible and incorruptible, so alone among all beings he is ordained to a double end, whereof the one is his end as corruptible, the other as incorruptible. That unspeakable Providence therefore foreordered two ends to be pursued by man, to wit, beatitude in this life, which consists in the operation of our own virtue, and is figured by the Terrestrial Paradise, and the beatitude of life eternal, which consists in a fruition of the ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... agonised apprehension, she did not lose control of herself for an instant. Directing Mr. Lloyd to be carried into the parlour and laid gently upon the sofa, Mrs. Lloyd bathed his head and face while Mary chafed his hands; and presently, to their unspeakable joy, he recovered consciousness. Fortunately, his injuries proved to be comparatively slight. Beyond a cut on his forehead, a bad headache, and a general shaking up, he had suffered no material injury, and he would not listen ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... story as she sat by the side of his couch, hand locked in hand, and he learnt by degrees the full measure of her self-sacrificing devotion, that did McKay so much good. It braced and strengthened him, giving him a new and stronger desire to live and enjoy the unspeakable blessing of this ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... at first completely overwhelmed by the summons from the committee. Disgrace, reproof,—even examination was a horrible and unspeakable humiliation, which it seemed to him impossible to bear. He hated life and was so thoroughly wretched as to be physically almost prostrated, although his strong will kept ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... severe countenances, the butter-plates remained as fixtures; the passing of them to a neighbor would be a frightful breach of good form—besides being dangerous. Such practices, in public places, had been known to lead to things—to unspeakable things—to knowing the wrong people, to walks afterward with cads one couldn't shake off, even to marriages with the impossible! Therefore it was that the butter remained a fixture. Even between those who formed the same tourist-party, there was rarely ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... suppose I was too angry. I must have been. Jevons's offence was unspeakable, or seemed so. He had outraged all decencies. He had done me about the worst injury that one man can do to another—at any rate, I wasn't sure that he hadn't. How could I have been sure! Every appearance was ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... frailty, "the badge of all our race." Upon his return after an absence of several moons, he found to his unspeakable dismay that that same "friend" had taken to wife the idol whose image had so long found lodgment in the Doctor's own sad heart. Too late he realized, as wiser men have done ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... how long it was before, to his unspeakable joy, he beheld the huge shape of the giant, like a cloud, on the far-off edge of the sea. At his nearer approach, Atlas held up his hand, in which Hercules could perceive three magnificent golden apples, as big as pumpkins, ...
— The Three Golden Apples - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... minute," said Pitapat; and to Capitola's unspeakable horror the little maid stooped down and felt along under the side of the bed, from the head post to the foot post, until she put her hands upon the slippers and brought them forth! Providentially, the poor little wretch had not for an instant ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... ago (whether in the body, I know not; or whether out of the body, I know not; God knoweth), such a one caught up even to the third heaven. 3 And I know such a man (whether in the body, or apart from the body, I know not; God knoweth), 4 how that he was caught up into Paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter. 5 On behalf of such a one will I glory: but on mine own behalf I will not glory, save in my weakness. 6 For if I should desire to glory, I shall not be foolish; for I shall speak the truth: ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... allusion to 'the star' in the Syriac of Eph. xix has, as it appears to have, reference to the narrative of Matt. ii. In the Greek or Vossian version of the Epistle it is expanded, 'How then was He manifested to the ages? A star shone in heaven above all the stars, and the light thereof was unspeakable, and the strangeness thereof caused astonishment' ([Greek: Pos oun ephanerothae tois aoisin; Astaer en ourano elampsen huper pantas tous asteras, kai to phos autou aneklalaeton aen, kai xenismon pareichen ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... than the choicest gift which could be bestowed upon me, better than life itself—my mother; at length she became unwell, and the thought that I might possibly lose her now rushed into my mind for the first time; it was terrible, and caused me unspeakable misery, I may say horror. My mother became worse, and I was not allowed to enter her apartment, lest by my frantic exclamations of grief I might aggravate her disorder. I rested neither day nor night, but roamed about the house like one distracted. Suddenly I found ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... to the central thing of the Blade's life, the eternal Feminine! Pity them, be a little sorry for them—the poor souls cannot be Blades. They must e'en sit and palpitate while the Blade flashes. The accomplished Blade goes through life looking unspeakable wickedness at everything feminine he meets, old and young, rich and poor, one with another. He reeks with intrigue. Every Blade has his secrets and mysteries in this matter—remorse even for crimes. You do not ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... and smoothed one part against the other; and lastly putting it into his pocket turned his back on me with an "over-run with these articles!" and so without another syllable retired into his counting house. And, I can truly say, to my unspeakable amusement. ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... figures of the living. "I wonder what he thinks about it all?" she thought vaguely, as she searched in her bag for his tip. "I wonder if he sees how absurd and unnecessary all the things are that he does day after day, year after year, like the rest of us? I wonder if he ever revolts with this unspeakable weariness from waiting on other people and watching them eat?" But the waiter, with his long sallow face, his inscrutable eyes, and his general air of having petrified under the surface, was as enigmatical ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... green, flowery, rock-built earth, the trees, the mountains, rivers, many-sounding seas; that great deep sea of azure that swims overhead; the winds sweeping through it; the black cloud fashioning itself together, now pouring out fire, now hail and rain; what is it? Aye, what?... An unspeakable, godlike thing, toward which the best attitude for us, after never so much science, is awe, devout prostration, and humility of soul; worship, if not in words, then ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... castles were finished they filled them with devils and evil men. Then they took those whom they suspected to have any goods, by night and by day, seizing both men and women, and they put them in prison for their gold and silver, and tortured them with pains unspeakable, for never were any martyrs tormented as these were. They hung some up by their feet and smoked them with foul smoke; some by their thumbs or by the head, and they hung burning things on their feet. They put a knotted string about their heads, and twisted it till it went into ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... you're making love," chuckled Frank, who seemed to be hugely enjoying the affair, to the unspeakable rage of his captive. "Ask them if they don't intend to give ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... listened silently to this narrative so naively told by this child, who obviously had no idea to whom she owed her freedom and her life. While the girl talked, her mind could follow with unspeakable pride and happiness every phase of that scene in the early dawn, when that mysterious, ragged man-of-all-work, unbeknown even to the woman whom he was saving, risked his own noble life for the sake of her whom his ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... sincerely Virtuous, and at the same time to let the World see we are so. I do not know a more dreadful Menace in the Holy Writings, than that which is pronounced against those who have this perverted Modesty, to be ashamed before Men in a Particular of such unspeakable Importance. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... me that I'll be in my grave. It amounts to the same thing," wailed Miss Manchester, who was, in the sphere of happier duties, Miss Letitia Portman, and had been the Princess's governess. "I can't look down; I can't look up, because I keep thinking of the unspeakable things behind. After I get my breath and have become resigned to my fate, I may be comparatively comfortable here, for some years; but as to stirring either way, there's no use ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... kept to the same direction and the same line. It behaved precisely as though it were rubbing against something solid. Undoubtedly, there was something standing there on that strip of carpet, something invisible to the doctor, something that alarmed the dog, yet caused the cat unspeakable pleasure. ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... lustrous, melancholy eyes, swimming in tears, were then lifted up to mine. Ages of eloquence were contained in that one look. In it, I read the whole story of her life, the depth of her love, the fealty of her faith, and the deep, the unspeakable prayer for sympathy, for love, and for protection. The mute appeal was unanswerable. It seemed to be conveyed to me by the voice of destiny, to my mind, louder and more awful than thunder. At that ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... finger on his eyes, and soft warm arms encircled his neck, and soft red lips pressed upon his. Closer drew the encircling arms, more breathlessly the red lips pressed his. He struggled for breath, and fought to tear away the dimpled arms. The music of Glory's voice rose into unspeakable tumult, the warm pressure of Precious' arms rendered him powerless. He fell insensible, and two days later they ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... boy toddled into the parlor—a dirty little boy clad in dirty pink rompers. His face was smudgy—Roxanne wanted to take him into her lap and wipe his nose; other parts in the of his head needed attention, his tiny shoes were kicked out at the toes. Unspeakable! ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the table, with the half-asserted, knowing look in his eyes, at Gigi: and all the time he addressed himself to Gigi, with the throaty, rich, plangent quality in his voice, that Alvina could not bear, it seemed terrible to her: and he spoke in French: and the two men seemed to be exchanging unspeakable communications. So that Alvina, for all her wistfulness and subjectedness, was at last seriously offended. She rose as soon as possible from table. In her own heart she wanted attention and public recognition from Ciccio—none of which ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... were so shattered that he could scarcely have spoken, even if he had been reckless enough to do so. He felt himself doomed; and when brutal natures like his succumb, they usually break utterly. Therefore, he could do no more than shiver with unspeakable dread as ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... within the chateau saw with joy the change that now appeared in Veronique's behavior. Without being told to do so, Aline got out her mistress's riding-habit and put it in good order for use. The next day Madame Sauviat felt unspeakable relief when her daughter left her room dressed ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... no higher service in Latium than the furtherance of civil order and morality by such means as these. In this field Hellas had an unspeakable advantage over Latium; it owed to its religion not merely its whole intellectual development, but also its national union, so far as such an union was attained at all; the oracles and festivals of the gods, Delphi and Olympia, and the Muses, daughters ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... please: Such truth, such warmth, such tenderness express'd, That my old heart was dancing in my breast. Upsprung the youth, "O Jennet, where's your hand? "There's not another girl in all the land, "If she could bring me empires, bring me sight, "Could give me such unspeakable delight: "You little baggage! not to tell before "That you could sing; mind—you go home ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... been in the most horrible and unspeakable fright all the while; for it was fixed in his little head that if a man with clothes on caught him, he might put clothes on him too, and make a dirty black chimney-sweep of him again. But when the professor poked him, it was more than he could bear; and, between fright and rage, he turned to bay ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... plain to Flora from the moment she set foot over the threshold that the house was to be no mean ally of theirs, but Mrs. Herrick was making it help them doubly in their hard interval of waiting. Alone together with unspoken, unspeakable things between them—things that for mere decency or honor could not be uttered—with nothing but these to think of, nothing but each other to look at, they must yet, in sheer desperation and suspense, have inevitably burst ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... in gloomy detail his early impression of Paradise: it was a sombre plain floating cloud-like in air, with, doubling through it, an unspeakable sluggish river of blood; God, bearded and frowning in the severity of chronic judgment, dominated from an architectural throne a throng of the saved in straight garments and sandalled feet; and, in the foreground, a lamb with a halo and an uplifted cross was intent on ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... last responsible to no one; free to accept whatever fate I may incur; clear of burdens. The great thing, man, is to have one's debts paid, one's obligations discharged: then death or life matters little, and the mere act of breathing fresh air is a joy unspeakable." ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... was to find her again. She could even now, however, with but difficulty utter a word. On being brought to the loft, she had discovered that it had been occupied by Owen, and, not knowing that he had escaped, her fears for his safety had been unspeakable, although her father and Captain O'Brien had endeavoured to persuade her that he must have got away during O'Harrall's absence. O'Harrall himself refused to afford any information on the subject, apparently feeling satisfaction at the agony the poor girl was suffering. He ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... ingenuity has even succeeded in inventing chemical preparations to check or frustrate its action. But the sulphurous brimstone which burns in hell is a substance which is specially designed to burn for ever and for ever with unspeakable fury. Moreover, our earthly fire destroys at the same time as it burns, so that the more intense it is the shorter is its duration; but the fire of hell has this property, that it preserves that which it burns, and, though it rages ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... while going down a steep bank and losing his footing had plunged to the bottom. How he had lain there bruised and helpless with a broken leg, expecting at any time to see the beast he had been tracking bear down upon him. How at last, after hours of unspeakable agony, help had come in the shape of a tall, strongly built young man, whose cabin was not far off and who had carried Jean to it, then, after roughly setting the injured leg, and making his patient as comfortable as might be expected under the circumstances, he had ridden ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... lad can be induced, at any rate before he enters a boarding-school, to follow the advice of that remarkable man, Mr. Thring, the founder of Uppingham School, in his address to our Church Congress, and write a letter of plain warning and counsel to the lad, it would be an unspeakable help. "My first statement," says Mr. Thring, "is that all fathers ought to write such a letter to their sons. It is not difficult, if done ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... shadow with humility, merely trying to conciliate the saintly Henry with acts of deference. Won by this attitude, Henry would sometimes allow the child to enjoy the felicity of squeezing the sponge over a buggy-wheel, even when Jimmie was still gory from unspeakable deeds. ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... over again; I copy out old interviews: but all these things I rearrange and classify and put to the exact test of truth. My collaborator in this work is Arsene Lupin himself, whose kindness to me is inexhaustible. I am also under an occasional obligation to the unspeakable Wilson, the friend and ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... examine a ghost with a purpose; he wanted to have his bones buried. The Highlands, in spite of Culloden, were not entirely pacified in the year 1749. Broken men, robbers, fellows with wrongs unspeakable to revenge, were out in the heather. The hills that seemed so lonely were not bare of human life. A man was seldom so solitary but that eyes might be on him from cave, corry, wood, or den. The ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... not get its Greek professor, but the culture of Mount Seward was not wasted. Mrs. Lee lived years, often in anguish unspeakable, relieved by intervals of peace and freedom from pain. The daughter became almost the mother in their intercourse as time passed, and the bloom on her cheek paled sooner than on her mother's in the depth of her sympathy. But the end ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... advantage of them. Cephalus answers that when you are old the belief in the world below grows upon you, and then to have done justice and never to have been compelled to do injustice through poverty, and never to have deceived anyone, are felt to be unspeakable blessings. Socrates, who is evidently preparing for an argument, next asks, What is the meaning of the word justice? To tell the truth and pay your debts? No more than this? Or must we admit exceptions? Ought I, for example, to put back into the hands of my friend, who has gone mad, the sword ...
— The Republic • Plato
... that in war appeareth all that is good and graceful, and that by the wars is purged out all manner of wickedness and deformity. For proof whereof the wise and pacific Solomon could no better represent the unspeakable perfection of the divine wisdom, than by comparing it to the due disposure and ranking of an army in battle array, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... still appears to many people to-day. The unspeakable savagery of bolshevism has made good the wildest threats of the partisans of violence and fulfilled the sternest warnings of the conservative. To-day more than ever socialism is in danger of becoming a prescribed creed, its very name under the ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... peace-songs. Yes, as gigantic as life, and still as jolly as gigantic, with never a regret in all these years of servile toil that he had sewed it up in his bear-skin cap instead of accepting at once the priceless blessing which his good mistress, in the unspeakable gratitude of her mother's heart, had bidden him to take ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... pew were each conscious of a similar feeling—they were thankful that they were together. Peggie Wynne had never been so glad of anything in her life as for Selwood's immediate presence at that moment: Selwood felt a world of unspeakable gratitude that he was there, just when help and protection were wanted. For each recognized, with a sure instinct and intuition, that those innocent-looking lines of type-script signified much, heralded some event of dire importance. To save Barthorpe Herapath's ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... what I had thus rapidly determined. I fixed on the evening of that very day as the period of my evasion. Even in this short interval I had perhaps sufficient time for deliberation. But all opportunity was useless to me; my mind was fixed, and each succeeding moment only increased the unspeakable eagerness with which I meditated my escape. The hours usually observed by our family in this country residence were regular; and one in the morning was the time I selected for ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... sonnet must be held to have been an unspeakable blessing for Italian poetry. The clearness and beauty of its structure, the invitation it gave to elevate the thought in the second and more rapidly moving half, and the ease with which it could be learned by heart, made it valued even by the greatest masters. In fact, they would not have ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... brows? Come like an angel to a damned soul? To tell him of the bliss he had with God; Come like a careless and a greedy heir, That scarce can wait the reading of the will Before he takes possession? Was mine a mood To be invaded rudely, and not rather A sacred, secret, unapproached woe Unspeakable? I was shut up with grief; She took the body of my past delight, Narded, and swathed and balm'd it for herself, And laid it in a new-hewn sepulchre, Where man had never lain. I was led mute Into her temple like a sacrifice; ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... visions! Beautiful, unspeakable hopes! Deep, inarticulate longings that fill the conscious soul! Ah! so sweet, so harmonious, so delightful, like an angel, like the bride of the pure and bright soul adorned for the nuptials, do I see the future beckoning me with a clear, transparent smile onward to her ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... stopped. Peering through the water-streaked pane at the end of his seat, the lawyer saw dim silhouettes of uncertain outline moving about. They moved with provoking slowness. He felt that it would be joy unspeakable to rush out there and thump them into animation. The fact that the stately Atwood Graves even thought of such an undignified proceeding is sufficient indication of his frame ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... are apologists who say that the wickedness of the Borgia family is grossly exaggerated, and that they were in reality very harmless and respectable people. But Rossetti thought of them, in painting this picture, as people stained with infamous and unspeakable crime, and he has contrived to invest the scene with a horror of darkness. Lucrezia sits in what is meant to be an attitude of stately beauty, and the figure contrives somehow to symbolise that; though she appears to be both stout and even blowsy in appearance. Her evil father, the ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... ever published or not, I am wholly ignorant."—Sale cor. "It is false to affirm, 'As it is day, it is light,' unless it actually is day."—Harris cor. "But we may at midnight affirm, 'If it is day, it is light.'"—Id. "If the Bible is true, it is a volume of unspeakable interest."—Dickinson cor. "Though he was a son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered."—Bible cor. "If David then calleth (or calls) him Lord, how is he ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... endorsement of the censure which these rough farming men had expressed in their homely, honest way. She had not far to look; "Mr. Robert Bludward, Swanker," was the title of one of the principal articles in the paper. She did not exactly know what a swanker was, probably it referred to some unspeakable form of cruelty, but she read enough in the first few sentences of the article to discover that her cousin Robert, the man at whose house she was about to stay, was an unscrupulous, unprincipled character, of a low order of intelligence, ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... d'Arency, but not for long; for suddenly Mlle. de Varion started up, as if awakened from a dream, and looked at me with an expression of unspeakable distress ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... required kiss there came a burst of passion that bowed her head in convulsive grief against her child's breast. The pent-up sorrow, the great burden of love and tenderness, the unspoken gratitude, the unspeakable longing of heart, all came in those tears and sobs that shook her as if she had forgotten on what a frail support she was half resting. Nay, nature must speak this one time; she had taken the matter into her own hands, and she was ...
— The Carpenter's Daughter • Anna Bartlett Warner
... intellect of God than the manner how he proceeded in its operation. I cannot dream that there should be at the last day any such judicial pro- ceeding, or calling to the bar, as indeed the Scripture seems to imply, and the literal commentators do con- ceive: for unspeakable mysteries in the Scriptures are often delivered in a vulgar and illustrative way, and, being written unto man, are delivered, not as they truly are, but as they may be understood; wherein, notwith- standing, ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... occasion for a prodigious quantity of oaths and grimaces, came stupidly alongside; and by five o'clock we were steaming out in the open sea. The vessel was beautifully clean; the meals were served under an awning on deck; the night was calm and clear; the quiet beauty of the sea and sky unspeakable. ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... at him with unspeakable anguish. "Got it—in the perishing neck this time, Bill," gasped the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... and shame and suffering and baseness in real life, and there is no need for meeting it unnecessarily in fiction. As Police Commissioner it was my duty to deal with all kinds of squalid misery and hideous and unspeakable infamy, and I should have been worse than a coward if I had shrunk from doing what was necessary; but there would have been no use whatever in my reading novels detailing all this misery and squalor and crime, or at least ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... A feeling for measure is a produce of civilisation, and men of the people ignore it. Those street daubers who draw on the flags of the London foot-paths always represent heartrending scenes, or scenes of a sweetness unspeakable: here are fires, storms, and disasters; now a soldier, in the middle of a battle, forgets his own danger, and washes the wound of his horse; then cascades under an azure sky, amidst a spring landscape, with a blue bird flying about. Many such drawings might be detected in Dickens, many also ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... complaining of her temptations—even temptations of sense. And chiefly and continually she complained of past guilt and present sin, by reason of which she felt as if 'remission of sins in Christ Jesus pertained nothing to her.'[48] This was not a case for the 'sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort' which the Church of England ascribes to the doctrine of Predestination rightly used. Nor does Knox deal with it—at least in his letters—by the simple and peremptory preaching of the Evangel. He recognised it as a case calling for sympathy, ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... as twenty-seven. He wears a slouch hat, around which a green puggaree coils lovingly. In his right hand his rifle rests as if it felt at home there. His coat is worn and shabby, khaki in colour; riding pants of roughest yellow cords, patched in places unspeakable, leggings around his sinewy calves, and feet planted in neat boots make up the whole man. He is clean shaven except for a moustache, dark brown in colour, which sprouts from ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... he gazed, looking at every familiar place of his youth. He knew now that every foot of it would be his. He had no bitterness in his heart. Not he, for in the love and constancy of Alice Westmore all such things seemed unspeakable insignificance ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... to little purpose, if you think so," said Mr Lerew, with more sternness than he had hitherto shown. "Only think of the unspeakable comfort obtained through priestly absolution, which will be thus afforded you. You will then know that your sins are put away. You will feel so holy, and clean, and pure. Let me, with all loving earnestness, urge you and your ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... those glorious October days, when every breath quickens the blood and when simply to live is a joy unspeakable, that Darrell first walked abroad into the outdoor world. Several times during his convalescence he had sunned himself on the balcony opening from his room, or when able to go downstairs had paced feebly up and down the verandas, but of late ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... in his tone and surprise unspeakable. He made no offer to take her hands, and they sank at her side. The driver seeing that his fare had found whom she sought, deposited her trunk and a valise upon the floor of the porch, with a succession of heavy thumps, and drove off with a relieved "Good-night," to ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... miserable World, into the generall Assemblie of Christ's First-born, to be united with the Spiritts of the Just made perfect, to partake of everie Enjoyment which in this World is unconnected with Sin, together with others that are unknowne and unspeakable. And there, we shall agayn have Bodies as well as Soules; Eyes to see, but not to shed Tears; Voices to speak and sing, not to utter Lamentations; Hands, to doe God's Work; Feet, and it may be, Wings, to carry us on his Errands. Such will be ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... her hand as she stood before him. 'No, Mr Trent; let me finish before you say anything. It is such an unspeakable relief to me to have broken the ice at last, and I want to end the story while I am still feeling the triumph of beginning it.' She sank down into the sofa from which she had first risen. 'I am telling you a thing that nobody else knows. Everybody knew, I suppose, that something ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... losing myself in a contrast of the man I was then and what I am now. Beautiful beyond all words of description that nook of oldest England; but that I feared the moist and misty winter climate, I should have chosen some spot below the Mendips for my home and resting-place. Unspeakable the charm to my ear of those old names; exquisite the quiet of those little towns, lost amid tilth and pasture, untouched as yet by the fury of modern life, their ancient sanctuaries guarded, as it were, by noble trees and hedges overrun with flowers. In all ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... made us sorry to have left the first. It paralleled the river, and into the center of it every manner of offal had been cast from the beginning of time to reek and fester and juicily ripen and rot in unspeakable corruption. It was such a thoroughfare as Dante might have imagined in his Hell, if people in his time had minded such horrors; but as it was we could only realize that it was worse than infernal, it was medieval, ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... story commenced) every day and all day, come fine or rain, sun or storm, there she would sit in the drift, damning the traitor's road of escape with that smile the Burghers had shuddered at. The scene, and the unspeakable sadness of it, used ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... we could, we conveyed her to the foot of the ladder, where she gradually began to recover and breathe more freely. This was now the third day of our confinement. The storm had almost subsided, as we could feel from the vessel lying more steady in the water; and, to our unspeakable joy, the hatch was opened, and a supply of water and biscuit given to us. Next to the water, the pure air of heaven was most welcome to us. I wet the parched lips of the pale sufferer, then held the beverage to them. She swallowed ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... at bad manners, but otherwise all (and of any nation) who had distinguished themselves, or possessed the priceless gift of personality, were welcome there; and although she lived to be amused and make up what she had lost during thirty unspeakable years, she progressed inevitably in keenness of insight and breadth of vision. She had become a student of politics and stared into the future with deepening apprehension, but of this she gave not a hint to Gisela. Mariette was ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... five miles of the grog spring we heared the report of several rifles very distinctly on the river to our right, we quickly repared to this joyfull sound and on arriving at the bank of the river had the unspeakable satisfaction to see our canoes coming down. we hurried down from the bluff on which we were and joined them striped our horses and gave them a final discharge imbrarking without loss of time with our baggage. I ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... us, that with the eye of faith we could see Him, and in Him all of God for which our hearts craved. "Whom having not seen, we love; in Whom, though now we see Him not, yet believing, we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... Unspeakable anxiety was depicted on her face. Surely she could not believe me fool enough to reproach her for such a harmless bit of pleasantry; she did not see anything serious in that sadness which I felt; but the more trifling ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... no sooner trimmed sail in chase of the barque than we found, to our unspeakable gratification, that we were still far enough to windward to lay well up for her, she being at the commencement of the chase not more than a point and a half upon our weather bow, while, from the superiority of our rig, we were able to look quite ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... world bathed in a peace as of heaven, as the vesper hymn floats over the evening air! It is a scene that will never again be enacted in the history of the world—dreamers dreaming greatly, building a castle of dreams, a fortress of holiness in the very center of wilderness barbarity and cruelty unspeakable. The multitudinous voices of traffic shriek where the crusaders' hymn rose that May night. A great city has risen on the foundations which these dreamers laid. Let us not scoff too loudly at their mystic visions and religious rhapsodies! Another generation may scoff at our too-much-worldliness, ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... the air that was caressing my face, I felt very sad for a moment. It looked like a very cruel world for all of its present smiling. On this coast the elements seem always to be waiting for their prey, just as, in the shelter of ledges deep beneath our keel, unspeakable slimy things with wide glaucous eyes are lying in ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... a tremendous shout of laughter was heard, and Charley and the Queen looking eagerly in the direction whence it came, saw, to their unspeakable astonishment, the old prime minister turning a somerset in the air. He got up, walked a few steps, and went head-over-heels again; while the fairies, ready for any fun, thought he had become crack-brained and was doing it on purpose, and screamed ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... tears. Boyd felt the justice of her words. He could not forget the unselfish devotion and loyalty she had shown throughout his long struggle. For the hundredth time there came to him the memory of her services in the matter of Hilliard's loan, and the thought caused him unspeakable distress. ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... the peasant—God is "the unknown," and in which he must forever remain the incomprehensible. This has been confessed by all thoughtful minds in every age. It was confessed by Plato. To his mind God is "the ineffable," the unspeakable. Zophar, the friend of Job, asks, "Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection?" This knowledge is "high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?" Does not ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... popular literature which is coming into vogue, is happily alluded to in a casual letter from Dr. A.W. Ives, of New York. "I regret," he says, "that the well directed labors of the excellent Otwin cannot be made available, but the truth is, there is such an unspeakable mass of matter written for the press at the present day, that all of it cannot be printed, much less be read. I think it one of the great toils of the age. Indolence is a natural attribute of man, and he dislikes intellectual even more than physical toil. Most men read, therefore, only such things ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... Ferdinand was able to release himself from the virtual control of Maximilian and the League, through Wallenstein, a general of extraordinary ability. He was a Bohemian noble, proud, ambitious, and wealthy. He raised an army, and made it support itself by pillage. The unspeakable miseries of Germany, in this prolonged struggle, were due largely to the composition of the armies, which were made up of hirelings of different nations, whose trade was war, and who were let loose on ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... a grief he wished to keep secret. Separation from friends, their departure, even when he was to meet them again, likewise caused him sadness. Especially was this the case with regard to Moore, whom he loved so much, and whose society had an unspeakable charm for him:—"I can only repeat," he said, "that I wish you would either remain a long time with us, or not come at all, for these snatches of society make the ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... that I had told a string of falsehoods to her uncle over the dead body of their idolised Bingo—an act, no doubt, of abominable desecration, of unspeakable profanity, in ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... said Garrison quietly. "You're the very best friend I've seen for weeks. Fairfax, the man who has done this unspeakable wrong, is a lunatic, somewhere between here and up country, at this moment. He was here in town for a couple of days, and I thought you might have ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... already seen, in seeing he knew hot and terrible anger. Out of the filthy mess in which the snake-devils wallowed, something had rolled, perhaps thrown about in play by the unspeakable offspring. A skull, dried scraps of fur and flesh still clinging to it, stared hollow-eyed up at them. At least one merman had fallen prey to the nightmares ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... exclaimed; 'and who art thou, thou jackal of this lion! who should dare to speak thus? Is it not enough that you have involved us all in unspeakable difficulty and possible disgrace, that we are to receive words of contumely from lips like yours? One would think that you were the English Consul arrived here to make a representation in favour of his countryman, instead of being the individual who planned his ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... in the Parliament House "Hermiston's hanging face" - they struck mere dismay into the wife. She sat before him speechless and fluttering; at each dish, as at a fresh ordeal, her eye hovered toward my lord's countenance and fell again; if he but ate in silence, unspeakable relief was her portion; if there were complaint, the world was darkened. She would seek out the cook, who was always her SISTER IN THE LORD. "O, my dear, this is the most dreidful thing that my lord can never be contented in his ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her husband had gone to Ostend to see the Emperor, and had declined to take her with him; for, as he was an alien, he could not understand her loyal enthusiasm, and that it was the one great desire of her life to see the ruler for whose kindness and goodness and greatness she had an unspeakable admiration; and her disappointment in not being able to go and see ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... brother, the head of the firm of Brodrick and Brodrick, Electrical Engineers. There was Dr. Henry Brodrick, who came next to John. He had brought Mrs. Heron, their sister (Mrs. Heron lived with Henry, because Mr. Heron had run away with the governess, to the unspeakable scandal of the Brodricks). There was Mrs. Louis Levine, who came next to Mrs. Heron. There was Mrs. John Brodrick, not to be separated from her husband, who, in a decorous dumbness and secrecy, adored her; and Mr. Louis Levine, who owed his position ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... talk of the impossible! The troops that hold San Carlos are bound to Alvarez. He has placed there only those from his own plantation; he has paid them royally. And they have other reasons for fighting to the death. Since they have been stationed at Porto Cabello their conduct has been unspeakable. And the men of this town hate them as much as the women fear them. Their cruelty to the political prisoners is well known, and they understand that if an uprising started here where Rojas has lived, where he is dearly loved, they need expect no ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... bursting with wrath. The fellow's coolness seemed never to desert him. "You are Colonel Clay!" he muttered. "You have the unspeakable effrontery to stand ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... was prolonged: the fare was only tolerable, but the overflowings of affection made it delicious. Never had I better understood the unspeakable charm of family love. What calm enjoyment in that happiness which is always shared with others; in that community of interests which unites such various feeling; in that association of existences which forms one single being of so many! What is man without those home affections which, like so ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... left it, in a small schooner sent from R. I., for the purpose of taking home some who belonged to that place, and the commander of the hospital ship had the humanity to use his influence with the master of the cartel to take us on board, and to our unspeakable joy he consented." ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... would afford me much joy to hear that all your children were made acquainted with the saving benefits of religion. For parents to see their children well settled in this world and seeking the world to come must, I apprehend, be an unspeakable satisfaction. Oh, let us pray more and advise them to turn to the Lord with all their hearts. "Please to remember me kindly to all the family. I do feel a sincere regard for you all and wish to meet you in the Land of God. ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... so sweet a child.... I have been permitted to feel inexpressible pangs at her loss, though at first it was so much like partaking with her in joy and glory, that I could not mourn if I would, only rejoice almost with joy unspeakable and full of glory. But if very deep baptism was afterwards permitted me, like the enemy coming in as a flood; but even here a way for escape has been made, my supplication answered ... and the bitter cup sweetened; ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... unspeakable! to be For ever with oneself! never to see An equal face, or feel an equal hand, To sit in state and issue reprimand, Admonishment or glory, and to smile Disdaining what has happened the while! O to be breast to breast against a foe! ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... been bred at the French court and hath there learned politeness and grace of manner which none understand so well as the nobility of France. That gait, now! A vulgar spectator might deem it stiff—he might call it a hitch and jerk—but, to my eye, it hath an unspeakable majesty and must have been acquired by constant observation of the deportment of the Grand Monarque. The stranger's character and office are evident enough. He is a French ambassador come to treat with our rulers ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... and that the prayers of his church were answered in your behalf. O, my children, what would be the situation of my heart had I not confidence of your being within the ark. I desire to rejoice over all my fears, for this unspeakable consolation, that nothing can hurt you. I experience for you what I did in my own case, when darkness and tempest added to the horrors of many, while our vessel kept dashing on the rock: I, too, expected her to go to pieces every moment; but the idea ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... and resolution to make a better world than that of yesterday, and to demonstrate that our heroic defenders have not died in vain. These are dangerous times to permit the inventive genius of man to go unchecked in matters of armament. The unspeakable horrors of the war just ended make us instinctively turn our faces away from the possibility of a half-century from now, if our thought is to be turned intensively to the production of things destructive to home life. With the sea fairly alive with submarines, ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris
... fainting within her bosom whenever she fancied she heard passing by the sound of a footfall or of the wind. But soon he appeared to her longing eyes, striding along loftily, like Sirius coming from ocean, which rises fair and clear to see, but brings unspeakable mischief to flocks; thus then did Aeson's son come to her, fair to see, but the sight of him brought love-sick care. Her heart fell from out her bosom, and a dark mist came over her eyes, and a hot blush covered her ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... Voice, shrieking: Rancor unspeakable, white-hot wrath Spring in your furrow, rise in your path! Harvest you vengeance from Belgian dust, Ye who have turned love ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... looked up. A cold, unspeakable terror filled her heart, and she tried to read the secret which her mother's calm face hid from her. Mrs. Costello delayed no longer to tell her ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... considerable population of Americans in Mexico, and some of these are of doubtful class and antecedents. But it would be unjust to pretend that only the Americans have furnished a doubtful element for Mexico's floating population. The shores of Albion have furnished a good many examples in the form of "unspeakable" Scotchmen, Englishmen, and Irishmen, at times. Yet the British name has, as a rule, been well established throughout Mexico and Spanish-America, and the American from the United States has often enjoyed the benefit of a reputation he had not earned, for, ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... drifting and endless as the cloud-seas of color. Clutching it, as if the tightness of his hold would strengthen his sense of possession, he went aimlessly down the street. It was his watch at the mill. He need not go, need never go again, thank God!—shaking off the thought with unspeakable loathing. ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... pitiful coward—unjustly, because, nurtured as she had been on the proprieties, surrounded all her days by men and women of a class most sensitive to public opinion, who feared the breath of scandal worse than a plague, confession for her must mean a shame unspeakable. What! Admit that she, Dorothea Westcote, had loved a French prisoner almost young enough to be her son! that she had given him audience at night! that he had been shot and ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... your conscience!—I hold you to your word. Oh, my dearest L——! to feel myself reduced to use such language to you, to find myself clinging to that last resource of ship-wrecked love, a promise! It is with unspeakable agony I feel all this; lower I cannot sink in misery. Raise me, if indeed you wish my happiness—raise me! it is yet in your power. Tell me, that my too susceptible heart has mistaken phantoms for ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... have any manner of sympathy with the precise doctrines and the forms of faith which Wesley taught. But the man must have no sympathy with faith or religious feeling of any kind who does not recognize the unspeakable value of that great reform which Wesley and Whitefield introduced to the English people. They taught moral doctrines which we all accept in common, but they did not teach them after the cold and barren way ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... unspeakable pleasure it will be to look down from heaven and see Rigby, Masterton, all the Campbells and Nabobs, swimming in fire and brimstone, while you are sitting with Whitefield and his old women, looking beautiful, frisking and ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... Tattered, torn and in unspeakable agony I picked myself up and found my steering-gear so damaged that I could only move sideways, crab-fashion, and in this manner I crawled on to the platform just as a train ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... out. He would appear as a vulgar murderer who, having failed by falsehood to fasten the guilt upon an innocent man, sought now by falsehood still more damnable, at the cost of his wife's honour, to offer some mitigation of his unspeakable offence. ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... it has about 1,500 inhabitants, all Montenegrin, for the Turk has almost entirely disappeared. Only in a ruined mosque and one or two dilapidated Turkish houses is the traveller reminded that once the Unspeakable was master here. The houses are all built with the afore-mentioned high conical roof and of ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... Still the battle was stubbornly kept up; but the majority increased from five to ten, from ten to twelve, and from twelve to eighteen. Then at length, after a stormy sitting of fourteen hours, the Whigs yielded. It was near midnight when, to the unspeakable joy and triumph of the Tories, the clerk tore away from the parchment on which the bill had been engrossed the odious clauses of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I done! What have I done!" he exclaimed. "Coquette, Coquette, tell me you do not mean this! You do not understand my position. What you say would be to any other man a joy unspeakable—the beginning of a new life to him; but to me——" And he turned away ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various |
