"Unspeakable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their escape, while Apelles engaged the foe; but from a rocky height which they climbed in their flight they saw him fall, and from that hour they had always mentioned him in their prayers. It would be an unspeakable satisfaction to him to do his utmost to procure for such a man as Apelles the rank he deserved in the list ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the world's embittered travail did not leave us devastated lands nor desolated cities, left no gaping wounds, no breast with hate, it did involve us in the delirium of expenditure, in expanded currency and credits, in unbalanced industry, in unspeakable waste, and disturbed relationships. While it uncovered our portion of hateful selfishness at home, it also revealed the heart of America as sound and fearless, ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... the more I whaled him the more he laughed. I laid on Macduff with a 'damned be he who first cries hold, enough,' determination, and yet he laughed. 'What you laughing at?' cried I. 'Oh, ha, ha, ha, you're licking the wrong boy,' giggled the unspeakable scamp. It's just that way here. You gentlemen are licking the wrong boy; I am not General Hall, at all, I am Lieutenant-General Ulysses S. Grant." The crowd roared: "He's a good un, let's hear him—ha, ha, ha, he's a good un," and for two hours I had ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... confessing, of having courage to stand before the cruel father. Goodness, how life kept distributing the same old roles over and over. Disgusting. Now the door moved. He did not open his eyes: an unspeakable sluggishness made his eyelids heavy. He heard Billy enter the room, step up close to him, and stand still before him. Then he opened his eyes ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... O solitude 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! Against a friend! ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... To Tillie's unspeakable amazement, he laid his hand on her head and held it there for an instant. "Gawd bless you, my daughter, and help you to serve ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... bliss - one must have seen it thus to understand how much all this resembles the wondrous illusion of our dreams, when in some inexplicable manner the simplest object gleams with a glow of heavenly splendor and unspeakable beauty and for days can fill our memory with ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... lords, earls, and governors; chance, only, had made them acquainted. She had been very kind. No, he must not presume upon her graciousness and tell her that his heart had gone out to her in a wonderful way. Many men had proffered their love, but had been rejected. It was blessedness unspeakable to be permitted to walk by her side, to hear her voice, to enjoy ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... 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: but I forbear, lest any man should account of me above that ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... single object stood out to relieve the monotony of that desert of grass. Any dwelling of man within reach of the searching eye must have been hidden in the troughs between the crests of summer grass. It was all so wide, so vast, so dreadful in its unspeakable solitude. ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... had not been sober at the moment, he had missed any intellectual pleasure my acquaintanceship might have afforded him. Like everybody else who moves about in London, I knew all about him. To sum him up, he was a most unspeakable little cad, and, if the drawing-room had not been Mrs Drassilis's, I should have wondered ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... swollen out of shape, his body covered with eruption. Though inexperienced in the disease, the parents wisely treated their boy with cooling drinks, and wet applications to the skin; under their incessant care, the fever abated, and, to their unspeakable joy, he rapidly recovered. Sobered and saddened, they could again hope, and enjoy the beauty of the calm sky and sea. Once more Nino laughs, as he splashes in his morning bath, and playfully prolongs the meal, which ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... this. Again, you see this throne is white. What means this whiteness? It is innocency or righteousness, and full of shining brightness, of an unspeakable joy. Innocent and righteous; how so? Because the Judge is white, innocent, and righteous; all his assizers that shall sit round about him, they are white, innocent, white and righteous; all his citations, summonses and convictions, sentences and executions, are innocent and righteous; ...
— The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. • John Welch, Bishop Latimer and John Knox
... were of a discontented and migratory turn of mind, and we frequently encountered two or three of them on the cross-roads several miles from their ancestral mud. Unspeakable was our delight whenever we discovered one soberly walking off with Harry Blake's initials! I've no doubt there are, at this moment, fat ancient turtles wandering about that gummy woodland with H.B. neatly ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... such a silent Satisfaction Sir Thomas Abney enjoys in the unspeakable Blessings of this Year, that brought our present King to the Throne: and he permits the World to forget that happy Turn that was given to the Affairs of the Kingdom by his wise Management in the Highest Office of the City, whereby ...
— Divine Songs • Isaac Watts
... protested. "You have killed a rat ... and you say—you say—" He raised one trembling hand to his lips to hold them from forming the unspeakable words. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... Blind fool—unspeakable idiot that he had been! To take her for Mrs. Palmer's niece—that peerless creature with the calm acceptance of any situation, which marked the woman of the world, with the fine appreciation and quickness ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... bravery and your good fortune have secured the victory. Kezan is ours. The khan is in your power, the people are slain or taken captive. Unspeakable riches have fallen ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... an interest in, a love for, an enthusiasm, in the very deepest sense of the word, for the phaenomena which they study. But the more they learn of them, the more their love increases; as they see more and more of their wonder, of their beauty, of the unspeakable wisdom and power of God, shewn forth in every blade of grass which grows in the sunshine and ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... mind was beginning to cloud again. "But there are so many other mysteries. We'll say that my father honestly wanted me to stand for the candidacy. But right in the midst of things he conspires with Mr. McVickar to put me into my present unspeakable dilemma." ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... regard to worshipping such things as these, it is said, 'Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve;' and as to those who laboured and shed their blood for the Saviour, they are above our honours, for they have gone to inherit unspeakable glory in their master's presence." The patriarch was more angry than ever, and taking off his slipper, beat both him and the priest, and drove the latter from the room, and locked ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... Tigris- Euphrates Valley, where the fabled Garden of Eden has been placed, in early ages succeeded the Nile- Valley as a great centre of human development; and the prerogative of a central and commanding position still promises it, even in the present state of decay and desolation under the unspeakable Turk, a magnificent future,[FN311] when railways and canals shall connect it with Europe. The city of palaces and government offices, hotels and pavilions, mosques and colleges, kiosks and squares, bazars and markets, pleasure grounds and orchards, adorned with ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... me ugly," he went on, "the assurance of the creature and my unspeakable carelessness in permitting the official letters brought to me on the day before by the post-office messenger to be seen. In my relaxation I had forgotten the eye of the chair attendant. I took the cigar out of my teeth and looked ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... event, it would have been out of the question to avoid a contest at so late a date. Immediately after the murders in the end of April, the savages crossed the frontier in small bands. Soon all the back country was involved in the unspeakable horrors of a bloody Indian war, with its usual accompaniments of burning houses, tortured prisoners, and ruined families, the men being killed and the women and children driven off to a horrible ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... swiftly, but not sufficiently so to avoid coming into contact with an enormous body, the scaly surface of which scratched him as he passed. He thought himself lost and swam with desperate energy. Then he rose again to the top of the water, took breath and dived once more. Thus passed a few minutes of unspeakable anguish, which all his philosophy could not overcome, for he thought, all the while, that he heard behind him the sound of those huge jaws ready to snap him up forever. In this state of mind he was striking out under the water as noiselessly as possible when he felt himself seized ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... contempt. "The girl's pretty," she said, at last, after a long, deep pause, during which I had been made to realise to the full my own utter moral and intellectual nothingness. "You may be sure she's pretty. Mrs. Wade wouldn't have foisted her upon us if she wasn't pretty, but unspeakable. It's a vile plot on her part to destroy my peace of mind. You won't believe it, Vernon; but I KNOW that woman. And what does the girl mean by signing herself 'Respectfully,' ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... the day when the tired old Bishop felt, with unspeakable joy, that he was to go and receive his reward at the hands of Christ, Whom he had loved so faithfully and so long, and was ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... of Malta he succeeded Barbarossa's son Hasan as pasha or Beglerbeg of Algiers (1568), and one of his first acts was to retake Tunis (all but the Goletta) in the name of Sultan Sel[i]m II., who, to the unspeakable loss of the Mohammedan world, had in 1566 succeeded his great father Suleym[a]n. In July, 1570, off Alicata, on the southern coast of Sicily, Ochiali surrounded four galleys of "the Religion"—they then possessed but five—and took ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... must sell a poem or two to get the price of a suitable new dress coat. "Alas," he writes to the lady herself, in that gay spirit of humor which is the strong defense of some sensitive souls, "with what unspeakable care I would have brushed this present garment of mine in days gone by, if I had dreamed that the time would come when so great a thing as a visit to you might hang upon the little length of its nap! Behold, it is not only in man's breast that pathos lies, and the very ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... found in history, whether actual or feigned. This character is that of a sublime humanity, such as was never seen on earth before, nor since. This shone manifestly both in his words and actions. We see it in his washing the Disciples' feet the night before his death, that unspeakable instance of humility and love, above all art, all meanness, and all pride, and in the leave he took of them on that occasion, "My peace I give unto you, that peace which the world cannot give, give I unto you;" and in his last commandment, that "they should love one another." ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... file, but in companies of three, the file leader of each being a saucer of custard, its follower a ditto of preserves, and the third keeping a sharp look-out in the shape of pickles; and to Fleda's unspeakable horror she discovered that the guests were expected to help themselves at will from these several stores with their own spoons, transferring what they took either to their own plates or at once to its final destination, which last mode several of the company ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... into a gully some feet lower than the surrounding bush. Thus it lost him, and he was safe from destruction. There, however, he remained with a broken leg for some hours until rescued; and during that time the mosquitoes caused him unspeakable torments. ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... land of the Houyhnhnms, in which horses, superior and intelligent creatures, are the ruling animals. All our interest, however, is centered on the Yahoos, a frightful race, having the form and appearance of men, but living in unspeakable degradation. ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... farmers. Isabel lived with her husband in the handsome rooms in front. She and he had been almost entirely alone together since he was wounded. They talked and sang and read together in a wonderful and unspeakable intimacy. Then she reviewed books for a Scottish newspaper, carrying on her old interest, and he occupied himself a good deal with the farm. Sightless, he could still discuss everything with Wernham, and he could also do a good deal of work about the place—menial work, it is true, but it gave ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... not to know that there could be such a wretch as Philip Sheldon upon this earth. We will say no more of that. I kept my secret, you kept yours. Mischief unspeakable well-nigh came of all this underhand work. But heaven has been merciful to us. We have passed through the valley of the shadow of death; and if anything could make my wife dearer to me than she was when first I won her promise to be mine, it would be the sorrow of ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... man's heart, strong to bear this night's Unspeakable affliction of mute love That crazes lesser things. The rocks and clods Dissemble, feign a busy intercourse; The bushes deal in shadowy subterfuge, Lurk dull, dart spiteful out, make heartless signs, Utter awestricken purpose ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... alleviation of the condition of the provincials; he reduced the tribute, and directed the soldiers to construct winter barracks for themselves, so that the oppressive burden of quartering the troops was done away and thus a source of unspeakable mischief and annoyance was stopped. For the children of Spaniards of quality an academy was erected at Osca (Huesca), in which they received the higher instruction usual in Rome, learning to speak Latin and Greek, and to wear the toga—a remarkable measure, which was by no means ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... since the first day the two had met, the shepherd's face and bearing had, to his eyes, remained the same. At this moment, Presley was looking into the same face he had first seen many, many years ago. It was a face stamped with an unspeakable sadness, a deathless grief, the permanent imprint of a tragedy long past, but yet a living issue. Presley told himself that it was impossible to look long into Vanamee's eyes without knowing that here was a man whose whole being had been at one time shattered ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... out of his pocket a piece of money, and tossing it into the air, it came down on its edge, and stuck in the clay. Though the determination answered not his wish, it was far from ambiguous, as it seemed to forbid both methods of destruction, and would have given unspeakable comfort to a mind less disordered than his was. Being thus interrupted in his purpose, he returned, and mounting his horse, rode on to London, and in a short time after shot himself. He dwelt in a house in St. Paul's Churchyard, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... unbroken—that cloud of rocky gloom, born out of the wild torrents and ruinous stones, and unlightened, even in their religion, except by the vague promise of some better thing unknown, mingled with threatening, and obscured by an unspeakable horror,—a smoke, as it were, of martyrdom, coiling up with the incense, and, amidst the images of tortured bodies and lamenting spirits in hurtling flames, the very cross, for them, dashed more deeply than for others, ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... shows only thorns and briers, and rough earth, yet, let a person dig deep into it, abundant wealth discovers itself; so it has proved in respect to Lazarus. Outwardly, wounds; but underneath these, unspeakable wealth; a body pining away, but a spirit noble and wakeful. We have also seen an illustration of that remark of the apostle's—in proportion as the outward man perishes, the inward man ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... wife, and of the wife saying in a mincing voice, "This is George in his den," and of boarding-house females peering over the wife's shoulder and smiling fatuously at the denizen who, in an old shooting jacket and slippers, grinned vacuously back at them. To Mark this was a horrible and unspeakable vision. ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... their calm majesty, dominate the puny world below, and then, because perhaps it would not be good to gaze for long on so magnificent a spectacle, the mists fall and the whole scene is blotted out, leaving in the memory a revelation of unspeakable grandeur. I saw this sunrise daily for a week, and its glories seemed greater every day. For some reason that I cannot explain it always recalled to me a passage in Job xxxviii, "When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... the poet, struck by superstition, "are not you that terrible and unhappy fantom? How many times this fear has taken possession of my dreams! How many times you have appeared to me as the type of the unspeakable agony to which the spirit of inquiry has driven man! With your beauty and your sadness, your weariness and your skepticism, do you not personify the excess of sorrow produced by the abuse of thought? Have you not given up, and as it were prostituted, that moral power, so highly developed by ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... just one tick in the great clock of history, it was permissible to straddle one's enemy when one got him down, and churn his head against the ground; to gouge out his eyes; to bite off his ears; to kick him, carve him, mutilate him in various and unsportsman-like and unspeakable ways. But it was the high crime of the code to slug him with brass or steel knuckles, commonly called knucks. The man who carried this reenforcement for the natural fist in his pocket and used it ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... followed close at his heels, wherever he went, with hanging head and slouching gait, never leaping or racing about like other dogs. When in the house, he always lay under his master's chair. He seemed to dislike Elsie, and she felt an unspeakable repugnance to him. Though she never mentioned her aversion, her brother easily saw it by the way in which she avoided the animal; and attributing it entirely to fear—which indeed had a great share in the matter—he would cruelly aggravate ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... gentle breath as over a mound of roses. The reliefs are touching and pathetic, and always represent life. There stand father and mother, their son between them, gazing at one another with unspeakable truth to nature. Here a pair clasp hands. Here a father seems to rest on his couch and wait to be entertained by his family. To me the presence of these scenes was very touching. Their art is of ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... attempted to govern her colonies on archaic principles which rendered her control of them incompatible with the advance of humanity and intolerable to the conscience of mankind. In 1898 the so-called war in Cuba had dragged along for years with unspeakable horror, degradation, and misery. It was not "war" at all, but murderous ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... know me," Hester was tremblingly expectant. At home, automobiles were rare, and Hester knew no more of them than the smell of the gasoline. To ride in an automobile would be a joy unspeakable. If it should chance that Mrs. Vail would take her, she would write and tell Jane Orr about it and describe the sensations that went ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... fall in love with at first sight for some pose of head, queenly carriage, auroral flush of color, penetrative music of voice, or a glance of soul through its illumined windows. You do not know much about her, but in long years of heroic endurance of trials, in the great dignity of motherhood, in the unspeakable comfortings that are scarcely short of godlike, and in the supernal, ineffable beauty and loveliness that cover it all, you find a richness and worth of which the most ardent lover never dreamed. The first sight of the canon often brings strong men to ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... sir! why that excellent good woman is in high health, in astonishing health! by my troth I speak it with unspeakable joy, I think she's a better life now than she was when I married her! ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... rarity of the atmosphere was plain. It seemed as though the envelope of breathable air surrounding the earth had suddenly become vastly rarified. If the. atmosphere had been so changed all over the globe it would be a catastrophe unspeakable. ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... swept to such an end is dreadful, but for a county superintendent to witness the drowning of one of her best—though sometimes it must be confessed most insubordinate—teachers, under such circumstances, is unspeakable; and when that teacher is a young man who was once that county superintendent's sweetheart, and falls in, clothed in a new made-to-order suit in which he looks almost handsome despite his manifest discomfort in his new cravat and starched collar, the experience is something almost ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... did not; it was a bewildering joy, but it was a longing; it was an exquisite satisfaction, yet it was also a secret, unspeakable wish; it was the first thrill of a feeling too exquisite for words to describe, but with it there came a mysterious forelightening of something unknown ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... was drenched in the blood of their fallen foes and looked like a crimson sea. Weapons and corpses, piled up like hills, covered the plain for more than ten miles. When the Goths saw this, they rejoiced with joy unspeakable, 279 because by this great slaughter of their foes they had avenged the blood of Valamir their king and the injury done themselves. But those of the innumerable and motley throng of the foe who were able to escape, though they got away, nevertheless ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... and the trench grew unspeakably loathsome and hideous to me. What a mockery, this business of killing men! No matter that beyond the canal there lurked the menace of a foe that had himself shown unspeakable barbarity and resource in plotting death. No matter if the very odour that stank in my nostrils called loud for vengeance. I thought of German prisoners I had seen, German wounded responding so readily to kindness and a smile. I saw ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... their temporal deliverance from Pharaoh and Egypt with their divers ceremonies; but Christians, blessed with a foretaste of eternal glory, will commemorate the resurrection of their Lord, as the first fruits of an unspeakable rest from the dominion of sin, of Satan, and of hell. Our glorified Redeemer sanctioned and blessed the first day, with his personal appearance in the assemblies of his saints. His inspired apostles kept it, as it is recorded, and thus it is ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... curtain of flame without touching him, he was actually slain with the sword. And in Gaul, especially at Vienne, there was a fearful persecution which fell on women of all ranks, and where Blandina the slave, under the most unspeakable torments, was specially noted for ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... "This is unspeakable bosh," he repeated. "I can't understand anything at all that is going on. People run on and run off again and make the most idiotic remarks. I really don't think I can stand any ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... to the manly assurance of his voice; her eyes dwelt with unspeakable joy upon his strong, bronzed features, his full thick blond beard, and the vigorous proportions of his frame. Many and many a time during his absence had she wondered how he would look if he ever came back, and with that minute conscientiousness which, as it were, pervaded her whole character, ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... was manipulating things in front; while the unspeakable man in gray sat unemotionally beside her in the tonneau and looked the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... God, in His adorable clemency, had allowed him to choose an angel among women; he has had the unspeakable happiness of having an Adeline for his wife! And he has deceived her, he has soaked her in sorrows, he has neglected her for prostitutes, for street-hussies, for ballet-girls, actresses—Cadine, Josepha, Marneffe!—And that is the brother I treated ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... earnest questions she gave ready answer, sitting in the midst of an eager crowd, and telling them in her sweet and simple way the story of her life in Domremy, and how she had first heard these voices from Heaven, or seen wondrous visions of unspeakable glories; and how she had learnt, by slow degrees, that which her Lord had for her to do, and had lost, by little and little, the fear which first possessed her, till now she knew not of the name of the word. She had but to follow where her ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... principal original altar in the Temple, and destroy all the others. Light on that altar the torch of science, which the better mind and cleaner hand of Europe are transmitting to us, and place your foot upon its false and unspeakable divinities. The gods of wealth, of egoism, of alcohol, of fornication, we must not acknowledge; nay, we must resist unto death their malign influence and power. But alas, what are we doing to-day? Instead of looking up to the pure and ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... on he plodded, blissfully bewildered, absorbed in these enchanting visions, until he found himself before a caterer's show window, tempting with crisp loaves of bread, daintily frosted cakes, and unspeakable cookies, tarts, jellies. ...
— Harper's Young People, August 31, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... decay reminded her of open graves. Not a soul was visible but herself. She sat on a seat, the only living creature in the scene, and the past rose before her with resistless force: the intensity of her happiness; the base cruelty of his conduct; her misery, her unspeakable misery; her forlorn desolation, which was of a piece with the desolation around her, and which would never again be otherwise, though she lived to be an old woman.—How long she sat thinking things of this kind, she did ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... would hear 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 ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... of a multitude of lungs which vice was rotting; tasting of their very putridity. A mist of tobacco smoke filled the place—was still rising in bitter, stifling clouds. There was a nauseating smell of beer and sweat and disinfectants. The boy's foot felt the unspeakable slime of the ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... admitted, sir," said the judge, "as you have voluntarily stated, that to a sailor every woman is fair and young, who is not as old as Hecuba, or as ugly as that other woman with the unspeakable name, you will be pleased to inform the court how it happened, or how it was possible, that in the course of a long voyage, you could avoid falling in love with the damsel whom you had thus rescued and carried ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... any courageous traveller or man of science knowing what I knew might well have excelled me, than on the direct and manifest favour of Providence. But this enterprise, the greatest that man had ever attempted, had in itself a charm, a sanctity in my eyes that made its accomplishment an unspeakable satisfaction. I would have laid down life a dozen times not only to achieve it myself, but even to know that it had been achieved by others. All that Columbus can have felt when he first set foot on a new hemisphere I felt in tenfold force as I assured myself ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... Wylie, Sr., noted with unspeakable chagrin that the last word was heavily under-scored in ink, as if by another hand. Hanford's bill was indeed paid, and with interest ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... uncompromising heartiness. The criticisms varied only in tone. One cursed with relish and gusto; another with a certain pity; a third with a kind of wounded superiority, as of one compelled against his will to speak of something unspeakable; but the meaning of all was the same. James Boyd's play was ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... character, its infinite loveliness, its unfathomable depth of love, and wisdom, and holiness, it seems to me that the impossibility is in not loving him. How can we help loving him? Add to this that He is our Father, out of the depth of whose being we were born, and that he loves us with an unspeakable and eternal love, and the attraction to love him becomes still stronger. Then think how much He has done for us; how he has given us our parents and friends, and all the dear and delightful objects of life, thought, and hope; and more than this, has given ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... wronged you?" cried Arvina, in a paroxysm of almost unspeakable despair. "In what, that you should take ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... your direction. All the power that is put into my hands, by the most generous of men, shall be exerted to make every thing easy and agreeable to you: And as I shall soon have the honour of attending my beloved to Bedfordshire, it will be a very considerable addition to my delight, and to my unspeakable obligations to the best of men, to see my dear Mrs. Jervis, and to be received by her with that pleasure, which I promise myself from her affection. For I am, my dear good friend, and ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... I've been! To go and work and work and work, and drive my men and all the machinery for months and months to make a ship and put in the engines and send it down and load it, and all for some"—a gesture expressed his unspeakable thought—"of a German to blow it to hell and gone, with a little clock-bomb ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... the fate in store for him and his. One false step, and the unspeakable doom which, not two generations afterwards, befell the Lutherans of Magdeburg, would have befallen every town from London to Carlisle. All knew the hazard, as they prayed that day, and many a day before and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... flowers of every season, commencing with Spring—and who does not hail the early Flowers with delight? After a long and severe winter, the appearance of the golden crocus and the modest snowdrop, peeping from the earth, convey to the mind a glow of unspeakable pleasure. ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey
... gallery, (wherein, repainted though it be, I suppose the purpose of the master is yet to be understood,) for if such subjects are to be represented at all, their entire expression may be given without degrading the face, as we shall presently see done with unspeakable power by Tintoret,[45] and I think that all subjects of the kind, all human misery, slaughter, famine, plague, peril, and crime, are better in the main avoided, as of unprofitable and hardening influence, ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... ceremony of weighing, for which he had given order. I explained the reason, as it actually was, on which he chid Asaph Khan publicly for the omission. He was at this time so richly ornamented with jewels, that I must confess I never saw at any one time such unspeakable wealth. He now amused himself in seeing his greatest elephants brought in before him. Some of these were lord-elephants, having their chains, bells, and furniture all of gold and silver, being attended by many gilt flags and streamers, and each having eight or ten inferior ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... not answer. And after an instant, during which Della surveyed him with scorn unspeakable, she strode stiffly to a chair in a far corner of the room and ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... 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 to the ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... upset minute or two. Unspeakable relief. Best love Nursey, who is jewel. Get out of her what she would like best." Oh, I oughtn't to have read that,' said ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... her name to screen some one else—or perhaps merely to escape from a situation of which he was weary. She did not care to conjecture what his motive had been—everything connected with him had grown so remote and alien. She felt no anger—only an unspeakable sadness, a sadness which she knew would ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... beheld the most fleeting motions of her eyes, and of her lips, all her attitudes, all the shades of her thoughts; and urged on by these pursuing recollections, he hastened his steps; and a new affection, an unspeakable tenderness, grew in him, grew in his heart, making sweet and quiet tears to flow down his face; and as he advanced through the gloom, he spoke to her, he said to her the words which he would murmur in her ear ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... by every rule of arithmetic - that flatterer of credulity - the adventure must succeed and bring great profit. Well, well: it was a bright vision. I went home that morning walking upon air. To have been chosen by these three distinguished students was to me the most unspeakable advance; it was my first draught of consideration; it reconciled me to myself and to my fellow-men; and as I steered round the railings at the Tron, I could not withhold my lips from smiling publicly. Yet, in the bottom of my heart, I knew that magazine would be a grim ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... kissing your hand.' And to Dona Isabel,—'Senora and my cousin, I entreat you to bestow upon me the soles of your feet.' [Note 5.] Verily, I marvelled at such words; but Dona Isabel in return louteth down to the earth, with—'Senor, I am your entirely undeserving scullion. I beg of you the unspeakable honour to present me to the serenity of the most highly-born lady beside you.' Marry (thought I) how shall I ever dwell in a land where they talk thus! But I was not yet at the end of mine amaze. Master Jeronymo answers,—'Senora, this English damsel, which hath the great ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... the Christian as well as to the pagan—to the philosopher as well as to 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 Wesley teach ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... instant she thought he was coming nearer to her, but he didn't: he stood there twirling his gloves. Then an unspeakable shame and horror—horror of herself, of him, of everything—came over her, and she sank into a chair at the back of the box, with averted eyes, trying to get further into her corner. 'Leave me, leave me, go away!' she said, in the lowest tone that he could hear. The whole house ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... seemed to attend us, and most delightful were my sensations. The circumstance of so many being engaged in spreading the glad tidings of salvation,—the temple of an idol converted to the purpose of Christian worship, and the Divine presence felt among us,—filled me with joy unspeakable. After the marriage service of the Church of England, Mr. Brown gave out 'the Wedding Hymn'; and after signing certificates of the marriage we adjourned to the house, where Mr. Brown had provided supper. Two hymns given out by Mr. Marshman were felt very powerfully. He is a most lively, sanguine ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... 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 moment, I pledged myself ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... made a desperate effort. The poor elephants made a gallant race of it. The foot men perspired and swore, but it was not to be. Our striped friend had the best of the start, and we gained not an inch upon him. To our unspeakable mortification, he reached the dense cover on ahead, where we might as well have sought for a needle in a haystack. Never, however, shall I forget that mad headlong scramble. Fancy an elephant steeple-chase. Reader, it was sublime; but we ached for ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... otherwise unaccountable admiration for the paper ends of the cracker, which were most unusually ugly. One was of a sallowish salmon-colour, and transparent, the other was of brick-red paper with a fringe. As Miss Letitia turned them over, she saw, to her unspeakable delight, that there were several yards of each material, and her peculiar genius instantly seized upon the fact that in the present rage for double skirts there might be enough of the two kinds to combine into a ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... in the sky were reflected so vividly from the white surface of the snow, that the whole world seemed now steeped in blood, and then quivering in an atmosphere of pale, ghastly green, through which shone the unspeakable glories of the two mighty crimson and yellow arches. But the end was not yet. As we watched with upturned faces the swift ebb and flow of these great celestial tides of coloured light, the last ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... his back and staring at his tormentor in unspeakable fury. The Indian, still determined upon amusement, again approached. Zeb remained motionless until he stooped over him; then bending his knees to his chin, he gathered all his strength, and planted both feet in his chest, throwing ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... though I had not been in the room at all. Thus departed for this time my chance of much learning from this so clever lunatic, so I shall go, if I may, and cheer myself with a few happy words with that sweet soul Madam Mina. Friend John, it does rejoice me unspeakable that she is no more to be pained, no more to be worried with our terrible things. Though we shall much miss her help, it ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... night and day; I took it to bed with me and hugged it to my bosom while I slept; every different edition that I could find I seized upon and read with as eager a curiosity as if it had been a new story throughout; and I read with the unspeakable satisfaction of most devoutly believing that everything which 'Honest John' related was a real verity, an actual occurrence. Oh that I could read that most inimitable book once more with the same solemn ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... Thy glorious works, Parent of Good! Almighty! Thine this universal frame, Thus wondrous fair!—Thyself how wondrous, then! Unspeakable! who sitt'st above these heavens, To us invisible, or dimly seen Midst these, thy lowest works! Yet these declare Thy goodness beyond thought, And ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... to the motion of his jaws, her unspeakable depression tightening up her tonsils and the very pit of her scared ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... tender caressing 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 ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... companions and sit very quietly, and if you sit long enough and quiet enough it may come to you; but this thing alone of all things you cannot steal, nor can it be given to you by the County Council. It cannot be communicated, and yet you may get it. It is unspeakable but not unthinkable, and it is born as certainly and unaccountably as you were yourself, and is of just as little immediate consequence. Long, long ago in the dim beginnings of the world there was a careless and ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... terror awaited them. Some peasants with whom they took refuge recognised Schell, and for a moment the fugitives gave themselves up for lost. But the peasants took pity on the two wretched objects, fed them and gave them shelter, till they could make up their minds what was best to be done. To their unspeakable dismay, they found that they were, after all, only seven miles from Glatz, and that in the neighbouring town of Wunschelburg a hundred soldiers were quartered, with orders to capture all deserters from the fortress. This time, ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... unable to believe one's senses, like a duck ion thunder. wonderful, wondrous; surprising &c v.; unexpected &c 508; unheard of; mysterious &c (inexplicable) 519; miraculous. indescribable, inexpressible, inaffable^; unutterable, unspeakable. monstrous, prodigious, stupendous, marvelous; inconceivable, incredible; inimaginable^, unimaginable; strange &c (uncommon) 83; passing strange. striking &c v.; overwhelming; wonder-working. Adv. wonderfully, &c adj.; fearfully; for a wonder, in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... long as the sun remains practically gaseous, so long will the great luminary continue to shrink, and thus continue its gracious beneficence. Hence it is that for incalculable ages yet to come the sun will pour forth its unspeakable benefits; and thence it is that, for a period compared with which the time of man upon this earth is but a day, summer and winter, heat and cold, seedtime and harvest, in their due succession, will never be wanting to ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... what he considers to be the chief 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 ...
— The Republic • Plato
... and shaken, I still held on my path till break of day, when I lay down under a huge log, and slept undisturbed till noon. Then, getting up, I climbed a great hill, and, scanning the country round, I saw, to my unspeakable joy, some habitations of white people, about ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Chips and Bungs increased their devotion to the bottle; and, to the unspeakable envy of the rest, these jolly companions—or "the Partners," as the men called them—rolled about deck, day after day, in the merriest ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... should still remember me! that my very name should raise such commotions in her bosom! that she should delight to hear my praise, and recollect the fortunate moment when I bore her from death with such affection!—It was rapture unspeakable! ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... satellites, but which thenceforth will rest on his soul also until he can contrive duly to alter these governments. And so it will happen that the great Union party to which he belongs, and to which I belong, will become implicated, for how long a time God only knows, in this unspeakable iniquity which daily and hourly cries to Heaven from every rood of rebel soil for ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... what she had done the rowdy would be arrested. But no policeman was in sight, and her fine scheme could not be carried out. Suddenly in the midst of her agony of mind and body her heart gave a wild bound of unspeakable relief. ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... celebration can scarcely be recalled without both smiles and tears. The drawing-room was filled with presents and beautiful bouquets; these, to Fleeming and his family, the golden bride and bridegroom displayed with unspeakable pride, she so painfully excited that the guests feared every moment to see her stricken afresh, he guiding and moderating her with his customary tact and understanding, and doing the honours of the day with more than his usual delight. Thence ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exquisite delights can tell, The joy which mutual confidence imparts? Or who can paint the charm unspeakable, Which links in tender hands two faithful hearts? Psyche. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... cottage may often contain a treasure of infinitely more value than the sumptuous palace of the rich man; even "the pearl of great price." If this be set in the heart of the poor cottager, it proves a jewel of unspeakable value, and will shine among the brightest ornaments of the Redeemer's crown, in that day when ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... dipped, and reappeared, and dipped again, as loath to leave its field of 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 significant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... goodwill of England was assured by the projected marriage of his son (now serving under Wellington in Spain) with the Princess Charlotte, heiress-presumptive to the British throne. He now therefore without hesitation accepted the invitation, and landed at Scheveningen, November 30. He was received with unspeakable enthusiasm. At first there was some doubt as to what title William should bear and as to what should be the form of the new government. Van Hogendorp had drawn up a draft of a constitution on the old lines with an hereditary stadholder, a council-pensionary and a privileged aristocracy, but with ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... be of 'small use to Sir Walter's surviving wife.' Lady Ralegh judged differently. She implored Lady Carew, who was acquainted with Wilson, to mediate with him that she might be 'no more troubled, having had so many unspeakable losses, as none of worth will seek to molest me.' Before the end of 1618 Wilson had fetched away all the mathematical instruments, one of which had cost L100. Lady Ralegh had, she affirmed, been promised their return, but had not recovered one. He was ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... recipes No. 140 and 259). Cruel methods of slaughter were common. Some of the dumb beasts that were to feed man and even had to contribute to his pleasures and enjoyment of life by giving up their own lives often were tortured in cruel, unspeakable ways. The belief existed that such methods might increase the quality, palatability and flavor of the meat. Such beliefs and methods may still be encountered on the highways and byways in Europe and Asia today. Since the topic, strictly speaking does not belong here, we cannot depict ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius |
