"Indefinable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... great deal too much of unfortunate accidents, and of truths which MAY be truths, but which are uncommonly like exaggeration. Stories are like people, whom we judge of in no small degree by the dress they wear, the company they keep, and that subtle indefinable something which we call ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... and dismissed the idea as ridiculous. Before the gentlemen had finished their wine, Amber was in bed, and Mrs Forster invariably sat at the side of it until her own hour of repose had arrived. A certain indefinable curiosity still remained lurking; yet, as she could not gratify it without intrusion (if the strangers were still up), she retired to bed, with the reflection, that all her doubts would be relieved in the morning; and, after ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... change in her? The vicar perceived something indefinable; and before they had walked half the distance to the road he had forgotten his own grievance. She looked ill. Janet Leighton, meeting him in the village a few days before, had talked of her partner as "done up." Was it the excitement ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... soon end, at any rate, and it did not matter whether their remnant of life was dark or bright. But this child had a right to a long stretch of unbroken sunshine. As I stood and looked at her I felt the heart-burning, the indefinable indignation that we feel in the presence of death when it is the young and fair who have died. Here is a miscalculation, a mistake. It ought not ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... repeated the words in a tone that was indefinable, yet a tone vehement in its incredulous questioning. "Three years?" she said again, as ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... in history or parable, in spoken or enacted symbolism, he will soon fix and record them in some such language for himself. Christ recognized the necessity of speaking to the multitude in parables, not attempting to precise or define the indefinable; but contenting Himself with: "The Kingdom of Heaven is like," &c. "I am content," says Sir Thomas Browne, "to understand a mystery without a rigid definition, in an easie and Platonick description," ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... is considered by some critics to be the leading exponent in the country of "the manner of de Maupassant, enveloped by an indefinable atmosphere that seems to bring back Edgar Allan Poe." He has been director-general of public instruction in Rio de Janeiro, professor at the Normal School and the National School of Fine Arts, and also a deputy from Pernambuco. With the surprising ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... by the sun made this living gold, these russet markings, to burn in a way to give them an indefinable attraction. ...
— A Passion in the Desert • Honore de Balzac
... his father's advice. Later he found that Spain indeed offered no career to honest men at this time. Gradually he supplanted his father in an unrecognised, indefinable monarchy in the Valley of the Wolf; and there, in the valley, they waited; as good Spaniards have waited these hundred years until such time as God's ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... her seem like a woman of fifty. At thirty-eight Jerome Rogron presented to the eyes of his customers the silliest face that ever looked over a counter. His retreating forehead, flattened by fatigue, was marked by three long wrinkles. His grizzled hair, cut close, expressed in some indefinable way the stupidity of a cold-blooded animal. The glance of his bluish eyes had neither flame nor thought in it. His round, flat face excited no sympathy, nor even a laugh on the lips of those who might be examining the varieties of the Parisian species; ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... correct the rigidity of the imperial lines, as the blood of the Beauharnais seems to have tempered in him the southern violence of the Napoleon blood. But what excites the greatest interest is that indefinable tinge of melancholy and thoughtfulness observable in the slightest movement, and revealing the noble sufferings ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... remained in the doorway. It was not the tea-table merely, but something else, the indefinable something which one may feel and not describe that was telling her to hurry. Afterward, with that regret which multiplies tears and subtracts nothing, she wished she had hurried, wished rather that she had not come, wished that she had defied the wolf, outfaced the butcher, done anything ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... to say, he has broken down the barrier between music and painting, and has isolated the pure emotion which, for want of a better name, we call the artistic emotion. Anyone who has listened to good music with any enjoyment will admit to an unmistakable but quite indefinable thrill. He will not be able, with sincerity, to say that such a passage gave him such visual impressions, or such a harmony roused in him such emotions. The effect of music is too subtle for words. And the same ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... humiliation. "He has the right to go away when and where he chooses. Not simply to go away, but to leave me. He has every right, and I have none. But knowing that, he ought not to do it. What has he done, though?... He looked at me with a cold, severe expression. Of course that is something indefinable, impalpable, but it has never been so before, and that glance means a great deal," she thought. "That glance shows the beginning ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... an indefinable something in this incident which caused creases to appear across Moore's brow. Why had two notes been thrown? The puzzle sifted down to this possibility: Some one behind the Chinese woman had thrown a ball of red paper, a ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... its glare of colour, its triumphant music, its crash of sound, was far behind me, almost forgotten; like clouds of indefinable tint, piled up on some distant horizon, rose the memories of its ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... chilliness, however kindly we acted up to our great national motto of De mortuis nil nist bunkum. It is this class of success which puzzles the social student. How comes it that men without any other talent possess a mysterious and indefinable talent to succeed? Well, it seems to me that such men always display certain characteristics. And the chief of these characteristics is the continual, insatiable wish to succeed. They are preoccupied with the idea of succeeding. ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... right enough, apparently. Miss Gerald came out of the hotel door towards them, smiling equally for both, with the indefinable difference between cognition and recognition habitual in her look. She was dressed for a walk, and she seemed to expect them to go with her. She beamed gently upon Lanfear; there was no trace of umbrage in her sunny gayety. Her face had, as always, its lurking pathos, but ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... is the first family meeting, after death has swept away one of its members! How the presence of each, calls up sorrow, and yet assists to repress it,—awakes remembrances full of grief, yet brings to life indefinable hopes, that rob that grief of its most poignant sting! The very garb of woe, whose mournful effect is felt to the full, only when each one sees it worn by the other—the very garb paralyses, and brings impressively before us, the awful truth, that for our ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... regular, and his beard luxuriant and soft as silk. His eyes were large and black as sloes, his teeth small, regular, and white as ivory, and his whole countenance, when in repose, wore an expression which won confidence rather than excited distrust. But when conversing, there was an indefinable craftiness in his smile, and a peculiar cunning in the twinkle of his eye, that often strikes the traveler in Mexico, as pervading all that class who are accustomed to making excursions into the interior. His costume, covered ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... mist. I sought to pierce them, to find the landscape, the cheerful village, the warm human life nesting under God's heaven, but saw only—way below—as through a tunnel cut betwixt mist and mountain, a dead, inverted world of houses and trees in a chill, gray lake. I shuddered. An indefinable apprehension possessed me, something like the vague discomfort of my dreams; then, almost instantly, it crystallized into the blood-curdling suggestion: What if this were divine chastisement? what if all the outer and inner dreariness that had so steadily enveloped ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... drama of light and shadow, of comedy and tragedy; for he gazed upon the scene with all his poet's eyes. He enjoyed the opera, the color and music, the propinquity of Kitty. Sometimes their shoulders touched; the indefinable perfume of her hair ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... the acknowledgments of her grateful heart. There was something in the whole appearance of Leonor that contributed to heighten her natural timidity, and even the kindness and affability of the daughter of Aguilar could not entirely dissipate an indefinable sensation of awe, which Theodora felt in her presence. She had been at first sight struck by the imposing and majestic beauty of Leonor, together with the dazzling splendour in which she was attired. Her senses were bewildered ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... mass of knowledge, solid and clear as crystal, but a sandy accumulation, bound together by no cohesion, and transmitting no light. And above and beyond all the advantages which a higher culture gives in the mere system of communicating knowledge, must be placed that indefinable and mysterious power which a superior mind always puts forth upon an inferior; that living and life-giving action, by which the mental forces are strengthened and developed, and a spirit of intelligence is produced, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... to us in tins, from which the labels had been stripped by some kindly act of Providence. In the expedition's early days our men had been able to exchange English jams for dainties procurable by the French and Senegalese, but the monotonous and indefinable "plum and apple" of the later summer killed the trade and extinguished all foreign admiration of British jam-making. Only the flies ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... entered, she received the latter with the cold and formal politeness of a stranger. Controlling the feelings of her heart, she schooled her features to an expression of indifference. It was manifest from Leon's manner, that without the remotest recognition, an indefinable presentiment regarding her possessed him. The Counts had called to know if Giovanna had recovered from her indisposition. Leon begged to be permitted ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... down her head, and began to weep. Montalais looked at her in an indefinable manner, and murmured, "Poor girl!" and then adding, "Poor king!" she kissed Louise on the forehead, and returned to her apartment, where Malicorne was waiting ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... on him quickly, and for a single swiftly passing instant the velvety eyes were deep wells of soberness with an indefinable underdepth of sorrow in them. Griswold had a sudden conviction that for the first time in his knowing of her he was looking into the soul of the real ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... indefinable charm is here, and the spell, and the music.... A distinct advance for Australian verse in ideality, in grace and polish, in the study of the rarer forms of verse, and in the true faculty of ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... an indefinable air of irony, and Joe went unhappily out of his office. He telephoned his father at length. His father did not share Joe's disappointment at being removed to a place of safety. He undertook to begin the castings for an entire new set of ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... of danger nor did the indefinable sixth sense, that came of long habit and training, warn him of any. Instead, it remained a peaceful night, though dark, and Tom looked contemplatively at his comrades. He was the oldest of the little party and a man of few words, but he was ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... incredible without the evidence of your own senses. Let me only say this, it was not so much what we saw or heard (in which you might fairly suppose that we were the dupes of our own excited fancy, or the victims of imposture in others) that drove us away, as it was an indefinable terror which seized both of us whenever we passed by the door of a certain unfurnished room, in which we neither saw nor heard anything. And the strangest marvel of all was, that for once in my life I agreed with my wife, silly woman though she be,—and allowed, after the third night, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Nolan, however, that Rodney first realized how seriously Clayton's friends were taking his affair with Natalie, and that not at first from anything he said. It was an indefinable aloofness of manner, a hostility of tone. Nolan never troubled himself to be agreeable unless it suited his inclination, and apparently Terry found nothing unusual in his ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... their words did not matter; or as if the supreme content of the moment could spare a little benevolence even for these outside things. At last a question was asked which made Betty prick up her ears; this must have been due to something indefinable in the tone of the speakers, for the ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... there is mingled like pollen an indefinable element of the author's personality. In Thackeray's "Lectures on English Humorists" this subtle quality is particularly apparent. Elusive, delicate, alluring—it is the actinic ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... dust heaped up in leathern bottles was insensibly creeping out through the worn-out seams. Delicate filaments drawn from marine plants hung amid flax from Egypt, Greece, Taprobane and Judaea; mandrepores bristled like large bushes at the foot of the walls; and an indefinable odour—the exhalation from perfumes, leather, spices, and ostrich feathers, the latter tied in great bunches at the very top of the vault—floated through the air. An arch was formed above the door before each passage with elephants' teeth placed upright and ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... contributed to impart weight and dignity to a mind that might otherwise have become somewhat effeminate and frivolous. His social habits, his clear sense, and benevolence of judgment, made him also an exquisite judge of all those indefinable nothings, or little things, that, formed into a total, become knowledge of the Great World. I say the Great World—for of the world without the circle of the great, Cleveland naturally knew but little. But of all that related to that subtle orbit in which gentlemen and ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "Indefinable fears, and a desire to monopolize all the meditations and affections of this being, had induced me to perpetuate her ignorance of any but her native language, and debar her from all intercourse with the world. My friends were of course inquisitive ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... Celia insisted upon his taking the easy chair, gave him a cup of tea—"Three lumps, please," he said—and seated herself opposite him and smiled on him with the sweetness that is as indefinable as it is irresistible. Mr. Clendon, who played in the orchestra at the Hilarity Theatre of Varieties, just below Brown's Buildings, being a gentleman as well as a broken-down fiddler, was conscious of, and appreciated, the subtle manner. He sat quite silent for a time, then, as ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... A subtile, indefinable prevision had suggested to her that Colonel Philibert would not have failed to meet Le Gardeur at Beaumanoir, and that he would undoubtedly accompany her brother on his return and call to pay his respects to the Lady de Tilly and—to herself. She felt her cheek glow at the thought, yet ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... at the wheels. There was something even more than dignity, an indefinable something, a superiority which Fitzgerald's present attitude of ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... appearing black against the bluish gray of the waters, was still her husband, even though already it became vague and indefinable, lost in the distance, where persistent sight becomes baffled, and ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... which you become acutely aware on making his acquaintance, is that he is a Londoner. "Nearly a pure-blooded London Saxon" is his characterization of himself. And so it is. He could have sprung from no other stock. In person and speech, in the indefinable quality of the man, in the humour which continually tempers his tremendous seriousness, he belongs to London. Among the men of our time who have done creative writing I can think of no other about whom this can ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... a roll of parchment. The expression of his face was grave, majestic, and noble; and yet between those handsome features and the attenuated face of the dying pauper Faith soon perceived one of those resemblances, strong, yet indefinable, which are so apparent to some ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... her indefinable presence that pervaded the room. The thin little old maid was quite lost in it, and involuntarily Prescott found himself bowing as if ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... burning heat, the warmth flew to the opposite part, which was so deliciously clasped in the doctor's caressing hand. He ground his teeth with pleasure and pain, he ceased to cry out, but sobbed and moaned with the excess of indefinable feelings. The doctor never ceased lecturing him, dwelling continually on the beauties of his lovely young cousin and the scene in the arbour. He thought but of her, of her lovely pink little slit so sweetly shaded with soft downy short curls; how she ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... upon him with an indefinable expression. "You ask me why not?" he said. "Why, look here—look in it—look at yourself! Do you like to see it? No! ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... felt that indefinable thrill never separate from the strange utterance, suggestive always of some dark mystery, and fascinating and holding the childish ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... if he would give her their names, she would save him the trouble. For, despite his affability, there was something about him she distrusted and disliked,—an indefinable air of insincerity, and a look out of his eyes ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... broader philosophy, and apply the more generous and more universal principle that "everything succeeds which attacks favorable opportunity with fitting endeavor," then we see that it was the strong vitality, the active intelligence, and the indefinable psychological law of moral growth that assimilates the good and rejects the bad, which Nature gave this obscure child, that carried him to the service of mankind and to the admiration of the centuries with the same certainty with which the acorn ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... words were the ingenuous expression of his feelings: in dictating, he pronounced them with that indefinable charm, that was impressed on his words when they ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... there be conceived to be drawn two diverging lines which at first are at a definite distance apart, but are produced to infinity, it is certain that the distance between the two lines will be continually increased, until at length it changes from definite to indefinable. As these absurdities follow, it is said, from considering quantity as infinite, the conclusion is drawn that extended substance must necessarily be finite, and, consequently, cannot appertain to the ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... singing with flute-like voice to her sister Sarah, who was soon, very soon, expected to become his wife. Leah had heard that voice before, had listened to its melody, attuned to other words, and as she recalled the vanished time, she trembled, shuddered, with an indefinable terror. ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... faded dogwood and wiped the moisture from his eyes. The glare from the unprotected boulevards was terrific. Under these somewhat unfavourable conditions he was occupied in studying the monument of Egypt's past magnificence when he felt a slight dragging sensation. It was indefinable and had no visual concomitant. But it was as though the brakes were being gently applied to a Pullman train. He was the only human being in the neighbourhood; not even a policeman was visible; and the experience gave him a creepy feeling. Then to his amazement Cleopatra's Needle slowly ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... to describe the rapid, varying, indefinable emotions that passed through the inexperienced heart of the youthful listener as Harley thus spoke. He so moved all the springs of amaze, compassion, tender respect, sympathy, childlike gratitude, that when he paused and gently ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... at his back, its warm rays falling upon him with affectionate caress. But the lad was plainly oblivious of his immediate surroundings; in spirit he had followed the leading of his eyes a league or more to the westward, where a mass of indefinable shadow bulked hugely upon the horizon line. Indefinable, in that it was neither forest nor mountain nor yet an atmospheric illusion produced by the presence of watery vapor. It did not change in density as does ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... timidity, and another indefinable expression in the woman's eyes as they followed the vanishing figure of her husband; faint lines appeared at the corners of her mouth, lines which had no place in the face of a happily married woman. She ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... survive unscathed to a maturer age. But Nedda had seduced him, partly by the appeal of her touchingly manifest love and admiration, and chiefly by her eyes, through which he seemed to see such a loyal, and loving little soul looking. She had that indefinable something which lovers know that they can never throw away. And he had at once made of her, secretly, the crown of his active romanticism—the lady waiting for the spoils of his lance. Queer is the heart of a boy—strange its blending ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... deficiencies, but these were retrieved by the general tendency and endeavour of the whole system; for this, though containing several absolute contradictions, manifest even at that time, yet vindicated on a general view its inner connection and hidden unity. The powerful, indefinable, stirring, and uplifting effect produced by Pestalozzi when he spoke, set one's soul on fire for a higher, nobler life, although he had not made clear or sure the exact way towards it, nor indicated the means whereby to attain it. Thus did the ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... at it. In part this appeal is through the appeal to principles and associations which are close to the heart of the audience, in part through concrete and figurative language, in part through the indefinable thrill and music of style which lies beyond definition ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... something in that land, surely, some personal and indefinable spirit of place, which was known and loved by prophet and psalmist, and most of all by Him who spread His table on the green grass, and taught His disciples while they walked the narrow paths waist-deep in rustling wheat, and spoke His messages of love from a little boat ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... long voyage to China; but he'd return to America, come back to Salem; and she knew that he would never bring her westward again. A period of depression followed which seemed to have no immediate connection with Gerrit; she had an indefinable feeling of struggling in vain against adversity, of opposition to an ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... sees him, why he sees him. He would not be the only person that has done so"; and she smiled faintly and half perversely, as her eyes sought that usual distant indefinable something. ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... youth. A fighter and a castle builder; a sort of rough-edged Peter Pan. Till he gums soft food and hobbles with a stick because the years have warped his back and his legs, Casey Ryan will keep that indefinable, bubbling optimism of spiritual youth. So tell me all about him. I want to know who has licked, so far; luxury or ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... wonder of a stranger—a Negro stranger, gorgeous of person and attire. He was dressed in a suit of black cloth. A long coat was buttoned close around his tall and robust form. He was dead black, from his shiny top hat to his not less shiny boots, and about him there was the indefinable air of distinction. He stood looking about the platform for a moment, and then stepped briskly and decisively toward the group that was staring at him with wide eyes. There was no hesitation in that step. He walked as a man walks who is not in the habit of being stopped, who has not ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... fell into a train of thought that seemed to bring back reminiscences of a vague, indefinable sort. Then he suddenly became aware that the snore of the snorer was not unfamiliar. He was on the point of rising to investigate this when the sleeper awoke with a start, sat bolt upright with a look of owlish gravity, and presented ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... become more womanly, and had acquired the indefinable polish given by a London season. She had learnt the art of conversation, and could make herself agreeable to her uncle, or to any one else who came in her way. Even May allowed that she had something in her, and cultivated her more ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... now arrived at the extremest boundary of the buildings in the suburbs. Before him lay an uninterrupted prospect of smooth, shining fields, and soft, hazy, indefinable woods. At one side of him were some vineyards and cottage gardens; at the other was a solitary house, the outermost of all the abodes in his immediate vicinity. Dark and cheerless as it was, he regarded it for some time with the mechanical attention of a man more occupied in thought ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... fragrance, the delicacy and the indefinable charm of Japan—all these are in this new vivid and alluring volume by Mrs. Madden. The captivating chapters vibrate with human interest. This is a book to enlarge one's understanding of the Japanese, to increase one's admiration for them, and to quicken one's appreciation of the value of Christian ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... by large frescoed pillars, into sixteen sections, that one steps from brilliant sunshine into deep twilight when he enters the cathedral. It is a sort of church which possesses in a high degree that indefinable charm of sacred atmosphere that tempts one to linger on and on indefinitely within its precincts. Not that it is so magnificent; many churches in the two capitals and elsewhere in Russia are far richer. It is simply one of those indescribable buildings which console one for disappointments ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... leaning from the carriage, I more than once detected the fragrant sigh of some astonished cow, whose ruminating repose upon the highway we had ruthlessly disturbed. But in the darkness our progress, more the guidance of some mysterious instinct than any apparent volition of our own, gave an indefinable charm of security to our journey that a moment's hesitation or indecision on the part of the ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... which, when the opportunity and the mood harmonised, could open a door for him into a beautiful world of dreams. He was quite aware that he often liked what would be called the wrong things; but what he was on the look-out for in art was not technical perfection or finished skill, but a certain indefinable poetical suggestion, which pictures could give him, when they came before him in certain moods. The mood, indeed, mattered more than the picture; moreover it was one of the strangest things about pictorial art, that the work of certain artists seemed able to convey poetical ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... by a subtle, indefinable malaise began to take possession of him. I once saw a very young foal trying to eat some most objectionable refuse, and unable to make up its mind whether it was good or no. Clearly it wanted to be told. If its mother had seen what it was doing ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... theatres, the concert halls, the County Club races, and at every fashionable entertainment to which her cleverness could procure her admission, her conspicuous figure, made more prominent by a certain indefinable loudness of style, a marked dash of manner, and gowns in a taste rather daring than refined, was too conspicuous to be overlooked. Yet it is doubtful if she had ever been up the steps leading to the gilded-domed capitol in her life. She went about much; and the unchaperoned life which in virtue ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... there was a mysterious and indefinable sentiment with which Dionysia had inspired him; for he had succumbed to her charms, like everybody else. It was not love, for he who says love says hope; and he knew perfectly well that altogether and forever Dionysia belonged to Jacques. It was a sweet and all-powerful sentiment, which ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... purpling light. Not far away the Spanish man-of-war "Alfonso XIII." lay at her moorings, and an American merchantman, brightly lighted, was near. The scene was peaceful, quiet, beautiful. True, in the minds of many officers and men on the American warship there was a lurking and indefinable sense of danger. Their coming had been taken by the Spaniards in Havana as a hostile act. Though all the perfunctory requirements of international courtesy had been complied with, salutes interchanged, visits of ceremony paid and returned, there was yet in the Spanish greeting an ill-concealed ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... like this, the character of eccentricity, which you first found in them by comparison with the women of Europe, disappears. A new type of feminine attractiveness is revealed to you, less affecting than irritating, enigmatic and slightly ambiguous by its indefinable blending of supple grace and virile firmness, by the alliance of culture and vigor, by the most thrilling nervous sensitiveness and the sturdiest health. The true place of such a creature in this society appears to you also, and the profound reason why these ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the Secretary's face there was a nameless cloud, so on his manner there was a shadow equally indefinable. It was not that he was embarrassed, as on that first night with the Wilfer family; he was habitually unembarrassed now, and yet the something remained. It was not that his manner was bad, as on that occasion; it was now very good, as being modest, gracious, and ready. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... solidly and substantially attired, yet there was an indefinable something about them which proclaimed them to be young men from one of the smaller cities of the ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... some psychic bathhouse attendant had poured ice water down his spine. For he had seen that look before, that liquid introspective look in the velvet eyes of cattle. He shivered. For a moment he had been thinking of them as human. And somehow the lack of that indefinable some thing called humanity robbed them of much of their glamour. They were still beautiful, but their beauty had ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... upon the centre of the breakfast table. Paul, glancing up from the pages of the Daily Telegraph, became aware of something vaguely familiar yet unexpected in his wife's face. She seemed listless, even slightly pale, and he experienced a sudden pang of an indefinable nature. Looking back over the past two years, he wondered if they had been as significant, as fully crowded with reality, for Yvonne as they had been for him. In Don's manner, when speaking of Yvonne, he had more than once detected ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... dark of the western range the stars gleamed like drops of water. He felt unsettled, ill at ease; dissatisfaction irked his thoughts and emotions. His unrest was without tangible features; it permeated him from an undivined cause, oppressed him with indefinable longing. He got, he dimly realized, but a limited amount of satisfaction from the money now at his command. He was totally without financial instinct—money for itself, the abstraction, was beyond his comprehension. He had bought a ponderous ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... begin to perceive how that man threatening to marry you to a man you hate, has opened again the wounds of my own sacrifice—a sacrifice he made nearly twenty years ago—heaven forgive him! Richard West was a gambler and a libertine. There was an indefinable something which told me as much, very soon after I met him. He was tall and fine-looking, and he had political influence. My brother had a motive for courting him. He carried out that object by introducing him to me. I can scarcely say that I loved elsewhere, though I certainly had a ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... the leadenness upon his soul, through that vague, almost indefinable sense of tragedy at hand, ran a curious little note of exultation. Though he had no smallest desire for her to set eyes on him, might not he set eyes on her? And yet, if he did, would the joy in the sight be worth the dull ache, the horrible sense ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... the mere physical beauty of other women went out in her immediate neighbourhood, and was no more thought of. It was not until she was quite mature, however, that her manner permanently acquired that subtle indefinable quality called charm, which is the outcome of a large tolerant nature and kindness of heart. It was as if she did not come into full possession of her true self until she had experienced numberless other phases of being common to the race. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... calm, and the rain had ceased; overhead the clouds, without form or colour, seemed to conceal that latent light that could not be explained; the eye could see clearly, yet one was still conscious of the night; this dimness was all of an indefinable hue. ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... candles burning bright upon the Christmas tree; I can see the presents handed round, and hear the shouts of glee, And from the buried years there comes a-stealing on the heart A something indefinable which bids the tear-drop start; I can see the blue smoke curling, through the little strip of wood Between the winding turnpike road and where the farmhouse stood; I can see the colts a-playing, I can hear the cattle low— When memory takes me back again to scenes ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... he. Among all the pearls that had passed through his hands—some goodly ones among them—none had seemed so rare and pure as this; it was a pearl of great price, for which a man might be prepared to part with all he possessed, if only to obtain it. There was an indefinable majesty, a moral glory, a tender grace, an ineffable attractiveness in this Man, which was immediately appreciated by the greatest of woman-born, because of his own intrinsic nobility and greatness of soul. It needed a Baptist to recognise the Christ. He who had never ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... as many suits of clothes as he chose to order! At that moment the poor child of the South felt no more doubts of any kind. The young man went down to breakfast with the indefinable air which the consciousness of the possession of money gives to youth. No sooner are the coins slipped into a student's pocket than his wealth, in imagination at least, is piled into a fantastic column, which affords him a moral ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... Ted and Larry waited, two tall, sturdy, well-groomed, fine-looking youths, bearing the indefinable stamp of good birth and breeding, the inheritance of a long line of clean strong men and gentle women—the kind of thing not forged in one ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... allowance when you are worked out. A board every day—except for two months' holiday, varied only by occasional tours of inspection—sounds horrible slavery to a man accustomed to wander at his own free will; and finally, at my time of my life, I have an indefinable dislike to anything involving a total change of life and habits. En revanche, I have a provision for old age and for my family, and shall be almost as glad to be spared the necessity of writing for bread—for butter ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... and Yerba, whom she had been watching from the window for the last ten minutes. Then the appearance of Mr. Woods, Californian and reminiscent, and Mrs. Woods, metropolitan, languid, and forgetful, and the sudden and formal retirement of the girls. An arch and indefinable mystery in the air whenever Paul and Yerba appeared together—of which even the ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... interest in the man that she could not controul, and thus compelled Maria to pause also. The crowd had withdrawn from the man, giving him sufficient room to roll over, in evident pain, while they yet stood gazing at him, with that indefinable feeling of curiosity and nerveless sympathy, which characterises man when not called on to act, by emulation, vanity, or the practice of well-doing. No one offered to assist the sufferer, although many said it ought to be done; some spoke of sending for those who monopolized the official charity ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... parts of the world, how often do naturalists dispute this same question, as I found with respect to the birds brought from the Galapagos islands. Yarrell has remarked that the individuals of the same undoubted species of birds, from Europe and N. America, usually present slight, indefinable though perceptible differences. The recognition indeed of one animal by another of its kind seems to imply some difference. The disposition of wild animals undoubtedly differs. The variation, such as it is, chiefly affects the same parts in wild ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... overturn and finding himself face to face with Gertrude Van Deusen on the pine-shaded road. He lived again through the rushing ride home, hearing again her silvery voice as she talked, and feeling again the indefinable charm of her presence. He forgot—that she was doing a man's work; he thought only of her femininity and grace and beauty. Then, realizing afresh the calamity that had befallen the city, he ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... interest,—sometimes discussion, sometimes information, oftenest of all, talk; and now and then came with the letter some book to give Faith a new bit of reading. Above all, the letters told her—in a sort of indefinable, unconscious way, how much, how much her presence was missed and longed for; it seemed to her as if where one letter laid it down the next took it up—not in word but in atmosphere, and carried it further. In that ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... Reggio, the sudden sight of an impressive landscape so affected him that he resumed a poem which he had long laid aside. But the deepest impression of all was made upon him by the ascent of Mont Ventoux, near Avignon. An indefinable longing for a distant panorama grew stronger and stronger in him, till at length the accidental sight of a passage in Livy, where King Philip, the enemy of Rome, ascends the Haemus, decided him. He thought that what was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... haste. The fresh wind and the exertion of running had a beneficial effect upon her, both physically and mentally, for by the time she arrived at Mr. Chartres' door, the feverish flush was replaced by a healthy glow, and the strange, indefinable feeling of restlessness which had all day possessed her, seemed to have been swept away by the breath of ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden
... Graustark was as good-looking a chap as one would see in a week's journey. Little would one suspect him of being the descendant of a long and distinguished line of princes, save for the unmistakeable though indefinable something in his eye that exacted rather than invited the homage of his fellow man. His laugh was a free and merry one, his spirits as effervescent as wine, his manner blithe and boyish; yet beneath all this fair and guileless exposition of carelessness ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... spite of all efforts to dislodge them from my memory. When I came to Worth at Miss Maltravers's urgent invitation, I found my friend Sir John terribly altered. It was not only that he was ill and physically weak, but he had entirely lost the manner of youth, which, though indefinable, is yet so appreciable, and draws so sharp a distinction between the first period of life and middle age. But the most striking feature of his illness was the extraordinary pallor of his complexion, which made his face resemble a subtle counterfeit of white ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... an indefinable stiffening change instantly coming over him. "By the way, I mustn't forget what I came for, before I ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... will choose an indefinable subject, for he can then set down his theory of what it is; and next, at length, his conception of what it is not—and lo! his paper is covered. Therefore let us follow the prolix and unmapable trail into that mooted ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... eccentricity—that is what a name ought to be. As the characteristic quality depends upon a hundred indefinable, subconscious associations, it is clearly impossible to suggest any principle of choice. The only general rule that can be laid down is that the key of the nomenclature, so to speak, may rightly vary with the key of the play—that farcical names are, within limits, admissible in farce, eccentric ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... at Glastonbury; in all England there is no lovelier musing place than the leafy walk beside the Palace Moat at Wells. As I think of the golden hours I spent there, a passion to which I can give no name takes hold upon me; my heart trembles with an indefinable ecstasy. ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... head in solemn assent; but Molly, watching with the most acute attention, felt her face blaze at the indefinable shade of mockery she thought to catch upon ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... conscious only of the girl's eyes, for I had done that unreasonable, indefinable thing—fallen in love at first sight, and I had fallen very far, and very deep. She did not glance at me often, and after the first I scarcely glanced at her at all, lest my eyes should be indiscreet. It was the most curious thing ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... I declare that we heard something resembling the real "Lohengrin" for the first time when the late Mr. Anton Seidl crossed the Atlantic to conduct it and other of Wagner's operas. We had come to regard it as a pretty opera—an opera full of an individual, strange, indefinable sweetness; but Mr. Anton Seidl came all the way from New York city to show us how out of sweetness can come forth strength. Mr. Seidl was a Wagner conductor of the older type, and with some of the faults of that type; he knew little or nothing of the improvements in the manner of interpreting ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... perfection may be laid to their charge, the works of this period are full of the indefinable fascination of promise. They are marked, moreover, by a simplicity and sincerity of purpose, an absence of all ostentation, a conscientious and loving devotion on the part of those who made them. And in many of them we are touched by great refinement and tenderness of feeling, and a peculiarly ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... from Ned Talbot's knowledge. He had not said so much in return, but there was no sense of chill in his reserve. He was naturally silent, and a word from him meant more than many protestations from another. Maud knew that he enjoyed her society by a hundred indefinable signs; and when they bade each other good-bye, the glance of the dark eyes seemed to speak of a warmer interest than that of friendship. Since then four years had passed by, and twice a year at least Ned had contrived to pay ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... nevertheless one of the least happy of little boys, and one of the least happy of young men. He was born with an uncomfortable and awkward and unwieldy character, as some men are born lame, or scrofulous, or dyspeptic. The child of a father over sixty, and of a very young mother; there was in him some indefinable imperfection of nature, some jar of character, or some great want, some original sin of mental constitution, which made him different from other men, disabled him from getting pleasure or profit out of the circumstances which gave pleasure or profit to ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... lay their insistence on the humanity of Jesus, exalting Him solely as the chief est of teachers. There are others who choose to dwell on the uniqueness of Jesus, who feel in Him some precious but quite inexpressible, certainly quite indefinable, spell of divinity, and who love to lose themselves in mystical meditations concerning His continual presence in the human spirit. Dr. Jacks, I think, is to be numbered among these last. But, like all ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... to these wonderful stories. There is, however, one, not to be found on record elsewhere, to which I would especially call the reader's attention. It is that of the middle-aged man, who assured me that he could never pass a tall hall clock without an indefinable terror. While an infant in arms the heavy weight of one of these tall clocks had fallen with aloud crash and produced an impression on his nervous system which he ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of effort, almost of painful effort, so far as the uncertain light permitted me to see, and his sleep seemed to be very profound. He looked, I thought, so stiff, so unnaturally stiff, and in some indefinable way, too, he ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... which constitute the aesthetic sentiment proper. Among the more vaguely revived emotions Spencer includes more permanent feelings of the race transmitted by heredity; as when he refers the deep and indefinable emotion excited by music to associations with vocal tones expressive of feeling built up during the past history of our species. This biological treatment of aesthetic activity has had a wide influence, some ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... down there." Sangster spoke deliberately now. In spite of his calm assertion that there was no harm in Kettering's visit to Upton House, his anxious eyes had noticed the indefinable something in Kettering's manner towards Christine that had struck Gladys Leighton that first evening. Sangster knew men well, and he knew, without any plainer signs or telling, that it was not the house itself that took Kettering there so often, but the little mistress of the house, with ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... very early, because Mr. Granger and Elizabeth had to catch the train. Beatrice sat through the meal in silence, her calm eyes looking straight before her, and the others, gazing on them, and at the lovely inscrutable face, felt an indefinable fear creep into their hearts. What did this woman mean to do? That was the question they asked of themselves, though not of each other. That she meant to do something they were sure, for there was purpose written on every ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... was like that of Don Diego—unbroken, monotonous, laid out by level in a straight line. He painted, but he did not live. People praised his work for the accuracy with which he reproduced Nature, for the gleam of light, for the indefinable color of the atmosphere, and the exterior of things; but something was lacking, something that stirred within him and fought in vain to leap the vulgar ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... along the village street to the old Judge Wilson house. It was a colonial mansion, sitting austerely back in a square yard. In spite of its prosperity, everything about it wore a dreary air, as if it were tired of being too well kept; for houses are like people, and carry their own indefinable atmosphere with them. Mrs. Wilson herself lived on a narrower and more secluded street, though it was said that her husband, if he had not defied the old Judge in some crucial matter, might have studied law with him, and possibly shared his ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... week had elapsed since that day so strangely compounded of rapture and dread; of matter-of-fact service, and shy, tender intimacies that had seemed to set a seal on the completeness of their reunion. Yet, in the days that followed, she had been increasingly aware of a nameless something, an indefinable constraint between them, which instinct told her would not have been there if conscience had ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... that indefinable something which enables a man to gain his object without seeming exertion or contest, and generally with the favor and approval of those with whom he deals. It is a general power to direct to the matter in hand whatever qualities are most needed for it at the moment. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... recognize a fundamental truth. We can be the best clothed, best fed, best housed people in the world, enjoying clean air, clean water, beautiful parks, but we could still be the unhappiest people in the world without an indefinable spirit—the lift of a driving dream which has made America, from its beginning, the hope of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... energetic communication with a faintly glad sigh. This snarl at least had righted itself. Suppose it were an omen? "The beginning of the end," she had said. It was a little thing, but in some indefinable fashion her heart grew lighter. As Arline's letter had come to her in time of need, perhaps out of the vast unknown would come some sign of or from ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... towards the rose-garden, bent upon the same quest as on the summer morning, which seemed such a long time ago, when Tom Burney had first declared his love for her. It was said in the village that Rose had lost her looks, and certainly the indefinable first blush of youth had faded; but if Rose's face had lost its delicacy of colouring, it had gained infinitely in expression. The blue eyes were soft and wistful, the pretty lips had lost their trick of pouting, the head was poised less saucily; trouble had taught ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... long white gown like that she had worn the morning he had asked her to marry him, but the similarity of dress only served to accentuate the change the intervening time had wrought. It was not merely that she had lost her color and that her face was haggard; it was an indefinable revolution in her personality, which made her look ten years older, and left her without a suggestion of girlishness. She still carried her head with her customary hauteur, but there was something in its poise which suggested defiance as well, and ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... were all herself, or if there really were a peculiar, indefinable constraint in everybody with everybody else. Certainly she felt it, and she thought she saw evidences that the others felt it, too. As for the cause of it all—unhesitatingly she attributed it to that last day at camp with its unfortunate trip ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... the sufficient revelation! For this first article of a reasonable creed is the key to all else—the clue which leads the mind safely through the labyrinth of doubt into the presence of the Eternal. Without attempting to define the indefinable, the soul rises from the belief in the reality of love and duty to the belief in "a holy will at the root of nature and destiny"—for "if man is capable of conceiving goodness, the general principle of things, which cannot be inferior to man, must be ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... piano and began to play. You would not understand, I suppose, the intellectual emotion of the situation. It is more than curious to sit in these rooms, in the filthiest spot in London, and listen to Mozskowsky, Tchaikowsky, and Sibelius, played by a factory girl. It is ... something indefinable. I had visited similar places in Stepney before, but then I had not had a couple of vodkas, and I had not been taken in tow by an unknown gang. They play and play, while tea and cigarettes, and sometimes vodka or whisky go round; and as the room gets warmer, so does one's sense of smell get sharper; ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... shock, emotional and professional—emotional that they had not taken up their relation exactly where they left it off—professional because of her appearance. Not only was she pale and just a little drawn of facial line, but that indefinable look of one "called" was on ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... astonishment I gave him provoked the first and only sneer I have ever seen on his face. What was I to say—what could I say, in response to such a declaration, following so immediately upon his warm assertion of her innocence? Nothing. With that indefinable chill between us, which had come I know not how, ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... mystery that resulted in Joan's disappearance. His impassioned eyes sought to peer into her very soul, and his nostrils quivered with the frenzied eagerness of one who awaited an answer to the implied question. In some indefinable way he had already begun to suspect the truth; for when the poor woman made no reply, though more than once her terror laden eyes met his in mute appeal, ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... seek for help in this life, and what to expect after it beyond the grave! How happy and calm I should be if I could now say: 'Lord, have mercy on me!'... But to whom should I say that? Either to a Power indefinable, incomprehensible, which I not only cannot address but which I cannot even express in words—the Great All or Nothing-" said he to himself, "or to that God who has been sewn into this amulet by Mary! There is nothing certain, nothing at all except the unimportance ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... added firmness in the repose of the lips. Immada moved a step forward. She looked at Lingard with terror in her black and dilated eyes. She exclaimed in a voice whose vibration startled the hearts of all the hearers with an indefinable sense of alarm, "He will perish, Hassim! He ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... straight before her at the place where it seemed to be. She realized its malice and its hatred, and an intense anger and hatred took possession of her. She had always laughed at such things even when thrilled by wonder and manufactured terrors. But now there was a sense of conflict, of evil, of the indefinable things ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... at her critically as she took her place. The change in her was indefinable, but he was aware of it. She seemed to ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... As indefinable as it is delightful, it comes with a lightning flash of wit into the dry, theological conversation of the preacher, relieves with its sharp hits the spread-eagle speech of the country orator, brightens with its apt allusions the ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... of the note-the full meaning of the admonition which my friend had thus attempted to convey, that admonition, even although it should have revealed a story of disaster the most unspeakable, could not, I am firmly convinced, have imbued my mind with one tithe of the harrowing and yet indefinable horror with which I was inspired by the fragmentary warning thus received. And "blood," too, that word of all words—so rife at all times with mystery, and suffering, and terror—how trebly full of import did it now appear—how chilly and heavily (disjointed, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... they had seriously talked of marriage, though they had been "going together" ever since Caroline knew that a 'boy' was as essential to her grown-up panoply as hairpins, and she felt something indefinable at the back of her mind which was not pleasure; and yet it was not fear—— She turned from her own emotions with a sort of relief. "Goodness! There's the church clock striking a quarter to eleven. We must have been three-quarters of an hour coming from the prom. here. I know Miss Ethel ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... his portrait. It's not the features, but something indefinable. He's a second von Sohn. I can ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... for by the lapse of eighteen months. It was that change which comes from the final departure of moral youthfulness—from the distinct self-conscious adoption of a part in life. The lines of the face were as soft as ever, the eyes as pellucid; but something was gone—something as indefinable as the ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... forehead, of a medium height, presents a widely developed surface, in the centre of which glows a light that is continued down the bridge of the nose. The eyes, of irreproachable shape, are full of brilliance, and their gaze sheds over all it illumines an infinite softness mingled with an indefinable exaltation. The mouth trembles with divine emotion and seems to ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... each other in the gloom, she knew his lips sought hers. By an indefinable instinct she turned from him twice before their lips met in a long kiss of passion and content. They kissed each other again before he drew her down beside him on the garden bench in ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... of Longfellow's the notable points are not power of invention, or vigorous creation, or profound thought, but a mellowness of observation, instinctively selecting the picturesque and characteristic details, a copious and rich scholarship, and that indefinable grace of the imagination which announces genius. The work, like the "Sketch-Book," was originally issued in parts, and it was hardly possible for any observer thirty years ago not to see that its peculiar character ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... long, straight hill, they saw plodding along in front of them an elderly man of spare stature and thoughtful gait. In his hand he carried a basket; and there was a touch of slovenliness in his attire, together with that indefinable something in his whole appearance which suggested one who was his own housekeeper, purveyor, confidant, and friend, through possessing nobody else at all in the world to act in those capacities for him. ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... formality, and assumed instead the serious gravity, the quaint movement, and marked emphasis which belong to popular music in Northern and Central Italy. An antique character was communicated even to the recitative of Verdi by slight, almost indefinable, changes of rhythm and accent. There was no end to the singing. "Siamo appassionati per il canto," frequently repeated, was proved true by the profusion and variety of songs produced from inexhaustible memories, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... the nature of their mind supplies them with a thousand devices to put an end to it. By questioning the young man as to the material exercise of his art, and as to his studies, Adelaide and her mother emboldened him to talk. The indefinable nothings of their chat, animated by kind feeling, naturally led Hippolyte to flash forth remarks or reflections which showed the character of his habits and of his mind. Trouble had prematurely faded the old lady's face, formerly handsome, ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... interrupt our Utopian speculations. We should both discover that the little towns below had changed—but how, we should not have marked them well enough to know. It would be indefinable, a change in the quality of their grouping, a change in the quality of their ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... which chiefly make the collection famous,—Raphael's Fornarina, and Guido's portrait of Beatrice Cenci. These were found in the last of the three rooms, and as regards Beatrice Cenci, I might as well not try to say anything; for its spell is indefinable, and the painter has wrought it in a way more like magic than anything ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to tell me," she murmured, in tones of indefinable reserve. "I quite believe in you, for I know you are very accomplished, because you ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... and remained in a contemplative attitude. The tempest raged without; it soon burst forth in violent gusts of wind and rain, which shook all the windows of the dilapidated mansion. Notwithstanding his audacious wickedness, Polidori was superstitious; dark presentiments agitated him; he felt an indefinable uneasiness; the howlings of the storm, which alone disturbed the mournful silence of the night, inspired him with an alarm against which he struggled in vain. To drive away these gloomy thoughts, he again examined the features of ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... still show you a black spot on the wall; the strange memorial of one of these conflicts. Luther sat translating one of the Psalms; he was worn-down with long labour, with sickness, abstinence from food: there rose before him some hideous indefinable Image, which he took for the Evil One, to forbid his work: Luther started-up, with fiend-defiance; flung his inkstand at the spectre, and it disappeared! The spot still remains there; a curious monument of several things. Any apothecary's apprentice can now tell us what we ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... from what I have already heard of it," returned Stevens, who had almost at first sight succumbed to that indefinable personal appeal which caused Sam Turner to be trusted of all men. "I shall be very glad to hear more about it. It struck me when you spoke of it yesterday ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... her, notwithstanding her black clothes and heavy veil, the atmosphere of a strange world into his somewhat severely furnished office. Her skirts swept his carpet with a musical swirl. She carried with her a faint, indefinable perfume of violets,—a perfume altogether peculiar, dedicated to her by a famous chemist in the Rue Royale, and supplied to no other person upon earth. Who else was there, indeed, who could have walked those ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that had grown up with her from childhood, that the deluded man could not discern which of the two spoke the louder. Are not all young men ready to trust the promise of a pretty face and to infer beauty of soul from beauty of feature? An indefinable impulse leads them to believe that moral perfection must co-exist with physical perfection. If Angelique had not been at liberty to give vent to her sentiments, they would soon have dried up in her heart like a plant watered with some deadly acid. How should a lover be ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... harassed and tormented Janina dreadfully, robbing her of her strength, but it also awakened a rebellion which began to seethe silently within her. She felt at first an indefinable animosity toward everybody. She regarded with a fierce envy the women whom ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... acquaintance exercised a very powerful influence over his destiny, nevertheless. There was a strange fascination in the society of the Austrian widow—a nameless, indefinable charm, which few were able to resist. A bitter experience of vice and folly had robbed Reginald Eversleigh's heart and mind of all youth's freshness and confidence, and for him this woman seemed only what she was, an adventuress, dangerous to ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... all matters not connected with his favorite occupations. His daughter awed him; the remembrance of her past devotion, of the energy she had displayed, of the powers he had allowed her to take away from him, of the wealth now at her command, and the indefinable feelings that had preyed upon him ever since the day when he had abdicated a paternity he had long neglected,—all these things affected his mind towards her, and increased her importance in his ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... evident alarm, and at the same second Angela thought that she heard a sound of a different character from those she was accustomed to in the old house—a sound like the creaking of a boot. It passed, however, but left an indefinable dread creeping over her, and chilling the blood in her veins. She began to expect something, she knew not what, and was fascinated by the expectation. She would have risen to lock the door, but all strength seemed to have left her; she ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... the forecastle of an outward-bound, deep-water American ship. Mr. Jackson looked in vain for the heavy, foreign faces, the greasy canvas jackets and blanket trousers he was accustomed to see. Not that these men seemed to be landsmen—each carried in his face and bearing the indefinable something by which sailors of all races may distinguish each other at a glance from fishermen, tugmen, and deck-hands. They were all young men, and their intelligent faces—blemished more or less with marks of overnight dissipation—were as sunburnt as were those of the two mates; and where a ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... stretches of wood whose leaves were opening, whose branches were filled with the sweet-smelling sap of springtime. Elizabeth seemed to wake almost automatically from a kind of stupor. She pushed back her veil, and Philip, stealing eager glances towards her, was almost startled by some indefinable change. Her face seemed more delicate, almost the face of an invalid, and she lay back there with half-closed eyes. The strength of her mouth seemed to have dissolved, and its sweetness had become almost pathetic. There were signs of a great weariness ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sweetheart, or anything of that kind," he hastened to add, as he saw the flush on Adah's cheek. "Hugh Worthington has nothing to do with that species of the animal kingdom, but as my Sister Adah!" and as Hugh repeated that name, there arose in his great heart an indefinable wish that the gentle girl beside him had been his sister instead of the high-tempered Adaline, who never tried to conciliate or understand him, and whom, try as he might, Hugh could not love as brothers should ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... would be several of them for a quiet dinner at which there was much good talk, and after which Sue and Sam sat for half the night, continuing some vein of thought brought to them. Among the people who came to them, Sam shone resplendent. In some indefinable way he thought they paid court to him and the thought flattered him immensely. The college professor who had talked brilliantly through an evening turned to Sam for approval of his conclusions, a writer of tales of cowboy ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... aphorisms upon sedition, does not venture on a definition of that indefinable term. Where, indeed, shall one draw the line between justifiable discontent and the inciting of men to lawless and violent acts? We shall notice presently the claim of a Scottish judge that an agitator may have good and upright intentions, and yet, if his ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... a proportion of its restless elements had been drawn towards the seat of conflict. But the air was full of a vague disturbance. To me, at least, it seemed so, emerging from such a solitude as has been hinted at, and the more impressible by rumors and indefinable presentiments, since I had not lived, like other men, in an atmosphere of continual talk about the war. A battle was momentarily expected on the Potomac; for, though our army was still on the hither side of the river, all of us were looking towards the mysterious and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the horseman to be Irish, Weary drove in his spurs and galloped forward. Ten leaps perhaps he made, when a rifle shot came sharply ahead. He glanced down and saw horse and rider lying, a blotch of indefinable shape, in the trail. Weary drew his own gun and went on, his teeth set tight together. Now, when it was too late, he understood ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... preaching. In common with other great preachers of our denomination,—Dr. Channing, for example, Dr. Nichols, and Dr. Walker,—he spoke as one standing within the all-encompassing and divine presence. He awakened in us a sense of that august and indefinable influence from which all that is holiest and best must come. He brought us into communication with that Light of life. He showed us how our lives, our thoughts, and even our every-day acts, may be sanctified and inspired by it, as every plant and tree is not only illuminated by the sun but vitally ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... she saw to be merely big; the face which had seemed to beam with intellect certainly remained fine-featured still, but it was like the work of a talented artist when it lacks the perfectly perceptible, indefinable finishing touch of genius that would have raised it above criticism, and drawn you back to it again, but, wanting which, after the first glance of admiration, interest fails, and you pass on only convinced of a certain cleverness, a thing that soon satiates without ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... book-keeping of receipts, expenses, and profits, is carried on. The man is not a suisse, nor a concierge, nor actually a porter. The gate which admits the dead stands wide open; and though there are monuments and buildings to be cared for, he is not a care-taker. In short, he is an indefinable anomaly, an authority which participates in all, and yet is nothing,—an authority placed, like the dead on whom it is based, outside of all. Nevertheless, this exceptional man grows out of the city of Paris,—that chimerical creation like the ship which is its ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... never asked. It was a great relief to that provincial little town in 1844, in this and in other cases, to find a word which released it from further mental effort and put out of sight any troublesome, straggling, indefinable qualities which it would otherwise have been forced to examine and name. Madge was certainly stuck-up, but the projection above those around her was not artificial. Both she and her sister found the ways of Fenmarket were not to their taste. The reason lay partly ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford |
