"Indescribable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... few Russian naval officers lately put the country into as great a commotion as a hostile invasion. I started southward from Lyons on the 12th October, 1893, amid scenes of wholly indescribable confusion; railway stations a mere compact phalanx of excited tourists bound for Toulon, with no immediate prospect of getting an inch farther, railway officials at their wits' end, carriage after carriage hooked on to the already enormously long train, and ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... or skin tents, which were moved as occasion required and so provided for sanitation. These wooden huts were undrained, dark and dirty to a remarkable degree. No water supply was provided, and the spaces between the houses were simply indescribable garbage heaps, presided over by innumerable dogs. The average life was very short and infant mortality high. The best for which we could hope in the way of morals among these people was that a natural unmorality was some ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... there were civilities, and the young men were receding. By a great effort she controlled herself to face the enquiring eyes of her friends. All that afternoon she lived the life of a heroine under the indescribable outrage of that name, chatting, observing, with "Snooks" gnawing at her heart. From the moment that it first rang upon her ears, the dream of her happiness was prostrate in the dust. All the refinement she had figured was ruined and defaced by ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... magic power in Kit Carson's calmness. He had a piercing eye, before whose glance many would quail. There was an indescribable something in his soft words, which indicated that they came from a lion-like heart. The whole company of trappers looked on in perfect silence, curious to see what would be the result of this ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... he said, wild and wanton though it was, was beginning to fill me with a sense of the most extreme discomfort. His sentences, in some strange, indescribable way, seemed, as they came from his lips, to warp my limbs; to enwrap themselves about me; to confine me, tighter and tighter, within, as it were, swaddling clothes; to make me more and more helpless. I was already conscious that whatever ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... Fleming almost covered his eyes; but by raising them a little he could flash out a lucid, penetrating, powerful glance, the glance of men habituated to silence, and to whom the phenomenon of the concentration of inward forces has become familiar. His thin lips, vertically wrinkled, gave him an air of indescribable craftiness. The lower part of his face bore a vague resemblance to the muzzle of a fox, but his lofty, projecting forehead, with many lines, showed great and splendid qualities and a nobility of soul, the springs of which had been lowered ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... but it had become a love all made of tears. Indeed, my whole being seemed made of tears. I thought often of these words, the peace of God; most certainly I had not found it. On the contrary, my life had become an indescribable turmoil. I found no help from my fellow-beings; I seemed to have lost the power of talking pleasantly with them, and my point of view had become different from theirs. Men could no longer please me, and I could not please God! I was entirely alone spiritually, and I said to myself it would be ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... fought with indescribable and unforgettable gallantry under most difficult conditions, and our German enemies have sustained considerable losses while failing to obtain ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the usual night hum of the city, with now and then an indescribable ring in it, weird and unearthly, as if some unwonted sounds of a terrible nature were going ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... to deny herself the last profit which the unfriendly action of the citizens and my absence had left her. For one instant they looked into each other's blazing eyes and then sprang together with indescribable fury. Round and round the room they struggled, the man cursing, the woman shrieking, both fighting like demons—she to strike him with the dagger, he to strangle her with his great bare hands. I know not how long I had the unhappiness to observe this ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... war. I gained an idea of the unspeakable homesickness of the man who leaves his family to an unimagined fate, and sacrifices years in the service of his country. I saw that the mere foregoing of roof and bed is an indescribable distress; I learned something of what the palpitant anxiety before a battle must be, and the quaking fear at the first rattle of bullets, and the half-mad rush of determination with which men force valour into their faltering hearts; ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... vivid personality of Mrs. Stewart made a kind of effervescence which that indescribable entity, a vivid personality, is sure to keep fizzing about it. She was devoutly admired, fiercely criticised, and asked everywhere. It is true she had quite given up her music, but she drew caricatures which were irresistibly funny, and was a tremendous success ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... Ah, then! moment so meet for the sweet question of questions, place so appropriate for the delicate, bashful, murmured popping thereof!—suddenly from the sward before, from the groups beyond, there floated to the ears of Richard Avenel an indescribable, mingled, ominous sound,—a sound as of a general titter, a horrid, malignant, but low cachinnation. And Mrs. M'Catchley, stretching forth her parasol, exclaimed, "Dear me, Mr. Avenel, what can they be all ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... them better than those of my own art. Night came, the enemy had entered Rome, and we who were in the castle (especially myself, who have always taken pleasure in extraordinary sights) stayed gazing on the indescribable scene of tumult and conflagration in the streets below. People who were anywhere else but where we were, could not have formed the least imagination of what it was. I will not, however, set myself to describe that tragedy, but ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... there had grown upon our ears a distant sound. Tonnison bent forward, listening. I could hear it more plainly now; it was continuous and harsh—a sort of droning roar, seeming to come from far away. I experienced a queer, indescribable, little feeling of nervousness. What sort of place was it into which we had got? I looked at my companion, to see what he thought of the matter; and noted that there was only puzzlement in his face; and then, as I watched his features, an ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... at Fontarabia, and did much that many tourists did not. One should see Fontarabia and find out its delights for oneself. There is a quaintness and unworldliness about its old streets and wharves, which is indescribable in print; there is a wonderfully impressive expanse of sea and sky on the Bay of Bidassoa, a couple of kilometres away, and all sorts and conditions of men may find an occupation here for any passing ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... the laird's wife would reply with a miraculous curtsey, spreading the while her plumage - setting off, in other words, and with arts unknown to the mere man, the pattern of her India shawl. Behind her, the whole Cauldstaneslap contingent marched in closer order, and with an indescribable air of being in the presence of the foe; and while Dandie saluted his aunt with a certain familiarity as of one who was well in court, Hob marched on in awful immobility. There appeared upon the face of this attitude in the family the consequences of some dreadful feud. Presumably the two ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... its paly quiverings the impress of evening, while not a cloud obscured the vast firmament of heaven. On such an evening Antonio could do nothing but converse of my absent friend; he dwelt on the indescribable grace of your person, the lustre of your eye, and the vermilion of your lips, until exhausted language could furnish no more epithets of rapture: then the transition to your mind was natural and easy; and it was while listening to his honied accents ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... like midnight caitiffs, disturbed at his reproach, made a sluggish retreat, rolling in sullen reluctance upon the mountains. As such times all was brightness, and life, and gayety; the atmosphere was of an indescribable pureness and transparency; the birds broke forth in wanton madrigals, and the freshening breezes wafted the vessel merrily on her course. But when the sun sunk amid a flood of glory in the west, mantling the heavens and the earth with a thousand gorgeous ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... very porch so cheerful to us. We were the only witnesses of this usually unheeded part of the funeral duties: accident had given to us a privilege which was lost to the crowd within. We instinctively uncovered our heads, and stood subdued by an indescribable feeling of awe as the corpse was carried outwards; and we felt grateful, that it had thus fallen to our lot to behold the departure of these the honoured and precious remains of Sir Walter Scott from the house of Abbotsford, where all his earthly affections had been centered. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... called merrily to the new-opened sunbeams, while the wreaths and flakes of mist lingered reluctantly about the hollows, and clung with dewy fingers to every knoll and belt of pine.—Up into the labyrinthine bosom of the hills,—but who can describe them? Is not all nature indescribable? every leaf infinite and transcendental? How much more those mighty downs, with their enormous sheets of spotless turf, where the dizzy eye loses all standard of size and distance before the awful ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... this little speech, but it was spoken in a low, sweet voice; and Rachel looked down on the ferns before her feet, as they walked on side by side, not with a smile, but with a blush, and that beautiful look of gratification so becoming and indescribable. Happy that moment—that enchanted moment of oblivion and illusion! But the fitful evening breeze came up through Redman's Dell, with a gentle sweep over the autumnal foliage. Sudden as a sigh, and cold; in her ear it sounded like a whisper or a shudder, and she ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Burke next proceeded to describe the deplorable condition of France itself, and to comment on the conduct of the national assembly towards their monarch. In the midst of his speech he was called to order by Mr. Baker, and a scene of indescribable confusion ensued, and much time was wasted in violent altercation: one side of the house contending that Burke was in order, and the other that he was out of order. In the midst of this discord Fox sarcastically said, that he conceived his honourable friend could hardly be said ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... not friendliness the thing of all things that is most pleasant in this world? Sometimes it has seemed to me that the faculty of reaching out and touching one's neighbour where he really lives is the greatest of human achievements. And it was with an indescribable depression that I wondered if these Masons and Oddfellows and Elks had in reality caught the Elusive Secret and confined it within the insurmountable and impenetrable walls of their mysteries, secrets, ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... next few minutes of inky blackness, of indescribable terror, of flying missiles armed with death, Cyclona lay unconscious. When she opened her eyes a calm light of the evenness of twilight had spread over the track of the cyclone, and her head lay pillowed on Hugh Walsingham's shoulder. Close beside her was a ragged bough and her broncho lay ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... the abstract notions which are all he has with which to describe it. I have attempted to show how it comes about that we are in fact able to perform this apparently impossible feat of describing the indescribable, using Bergson's descriptions of sensible perception and the relations of matter and memory to illustrate my point. If we succeed in ridding ourselves of our common-sense preconceptions, Bergson tells us that we may ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen
... saunterers. Alexina darted quick curious glances at them as she walked rapidly along. In front of every saloon was a group of young men almost fascinatingly common to Alexina's cloistered eyes, their hats tilted over their foreheads at an indescribable angle, rank black cigars in the corners of their mouths, or cigarettes hanging from their loose lips, leering at "bunches" of girls that passed unattended, appraising them cynically, ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... supreme muscular effort, a long way in excess of my real strength, stripping myself, as of a shell that served no purpose, of the air in my own room which surrounded me, I replaced it by an equal quantity of Venetian air, that marine atmosphere, indescribable and peculiar as the atmosphere of the dreams which my imagination had secreted in the name of Venice; I could feel at work within me a miraculous disincarnation; it was at once accompanied by that vague desire to vomit which one feels when one has a very sore throat; and they had to put me to ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... in real life was very pale, and had exquisitely chiselled features, and the ones I now looked upon were of the same cast. The height was also similar, and an indescribable atmosphere of refinement, purity, and quiet dignity, for which she had been remarkable; all this was present with this materialisation. More than this I cannot say, for no materialisation I have ever seen could be truthfully considered identical ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... with which she said this was indescribable. I think it gave me a more thrilling consciousness of human terror in face of the supernatural than anything which I had yet heard in this connection. Surely her motive for remaining in the haunted house had been ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... look so scared," laughed the girl, "I haven't come down to that." Her voice had changed. It had a note of shrillness. In some indescribable way she had grown coarse. "I'm a kept woman," she explained. "What else is ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... of Boorj, and we mounted into a high table-land commanding prospects of indescribable grandeur, which comprised parts of both Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, the extreme heights of Sannin and Hermon ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... perceived, deeply moved, and stood with lips compressed, nodded in token of assent. We went quickly down the stairway, and took our way up the hill among the stones, in silence. The shapes of similar enclosures were to be seen everywhere, and the indescribable blankness and grimness of the scene struck a chill ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Napoleon; but in the people's minds, the necessity at such an occasion for an unchanged Government did not outweigh the fancy that George IV. was a Whig. And a Whig it is true he had been before the French Revolution, when he lived an indescribable life in St. James's Street with Mr. Fox. But Lord Grey and Lord Grenville were rigid men, and had no immoral sort of influence. What liberalism of opinion the Regent ever had was frightened out of him (as of other people) by the Reign of Terror. He felt, according to the saying of another monarch, ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... most strange, and at once sad and sweet, to find that mind of a truly fine, pure, and elevated order. They were written to papa before they were married. There is a rectitude, a refinement, a constancy, a modesty, a sense, a gentleness about them indescribable. I wish she had lived, and that I had ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... superiority of her air and the haughtiness of her manner had for me an indescribable charm, no less than her beauty; and I resolved, if possible, to make her my mistress, for I doubted not that when she should become nourished and strengthened by proper food and rest, she would make a very desirable companion for a man ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... story of a girl of twelve, who, when the mystery of her birth is solved, like Cinderella, passes from drudgery to better circumstances. There is nothing strained or unnatural at any point. All descriptions or portrayals of character are life-like, and the book has an indescribable appealing quality which wins sympathy and ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... she said, 'he wasn't a gentleman at all; he was one of those mean whites down South.' As she said this, the scornful emphasis on mean whites was something quite indescribable. Truly, the condition of poor whites at the South must be pitiable indeed, to be regarded with such utter contempt ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Watteville in the frame of mind produced by her curiosity. And Albert Savaron, who was really very striking, made all the more impression on Rosalie because his mien, his walk, his carriage, everything down to his clothing, had the indescribable stamp which can only be ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... took good care to retain a hold upon a projecting portion of the car. Occasionally cautiously releasing my grip, I experienced for a few minutes the delicious, indescribable pleasure of being a little planet swinging through space, with nothing to hold me up and nothing to interfere ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... looked likely to be a reign of terror. These facts account for the uneasy tone of a letter written by Michelangelo to Buonarroto. Prato had been taken by assault upon the 30th of August, and was now prostrate after those hideous days of torment, massacre, and outrage indescribable which followed. In these circumstances Michelangelo advises his family to "escape into a place of safety, abandoning their household gear and property; for life is far more worth than money." If they ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... other way of description is open. If there were mental states which are composed of other elements than sensations, they would necessarily remain indescribable; we could not grasp them because they would not have any definite relation to the common physical world. We might say, for instance, that our mental content is made up of sensations and feelings, but if such feelings were really entirely different from sensations, ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... bare bluff, swept clear by the wind, revealing its ugliness through the haze of snow. Not in all the expanse was there visible a moving object nor track of any kind. He was alone, in the midst of indescribable desolation—a cold, ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... morning came to him. These sounds—he realized now how he loved them. Verily they were a part of his life. Mid them he had been bred; of them as of food he had grown. That whistle, thin and unmusical; that elusive, indescribable call of prairie male; all these homely sounds that meant so much to him—could he ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... is indescribable, I can only say that it is as beautiful as the words.[Footnote: "The peculiarly liquid quality of Polynesian phonetics is impossible for foreigners to acquire. Europeans who attempt a mastery of these sounds invariably suffer from what etymologists ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... It was not more than a hundred yards to where the grass grew on firm ground. Racey and his horse reached solid earth without incident. Then—a scramble, a scraping, and a clattering followed in a breath by the indescribable sound of a ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... Eugene Field and Hamlin Garland." It purported to be an interview which the latter had with the former in his "attic study" in Chicago. Field was represented surrounded by "a museum of old books, rare books, Indian relics, dramatic souvenirs, and bric-a-brac indescribable." The result is a most remarkable jumble of misinformation and fiction, with which Field plied Garland to the top of his bent. What Garland thought were bottom facts were really sky-scraping fiction. As if this were not enough, Garland made Field talk in an approach to an illiterate ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... you. My mother is in a state of indescribable agitation. Her brother's Will has been found in Italy. And his daughter may arrive in England at a ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... sea, wind more ahead, and occasional squalls. On the night of the 18th we encountered one of the most awful hurricanes ever witnessed by the oldest sailor on board; and from this date to the 24th inst. we experienced a succession of storms of indescribable violence and severity, which at some intervals caused great and I believe very just alarm for the safety of the ship. The President steamer, coming in the opposite direction, is known to have encountered the same weather, and was doubtless lost, not having since been heard of. Our ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... the bevy of buxom lasses, with their luxurious display of red and white; but the ample charms of a genuine Dutch country tea-table, in the sumptuous time of autumn. Such heaped-up platters of cakes of various and almost indescribable kinds, known only to experienced Dutch housewives! There was the doughty doughnut, the tender olykoek, and the crisp and crumbling cruller; sweet cakes and short cakes, ginger cakes and honey cakes, and the whole family of cakes. And then there were ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... as alien in the world. He was without companionship except that of Willy Woolly, without interest except that of his timepieces, and without hope except that of rejoining her. Once he emerged from a long spell of musing, to say in a tone of indescribable conviction: ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... through the ether. But in the south is a faint glimmer of day low down of a dark, glowing red hue, and higher up a clear yellow and pale-green arch, that loses itself in the blue above. The whole melts into a pure harmony, one and indescribable. At times one longs to be able to translate such scenes into music. What mighty chords one would require to ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... delicate bit of statuary, like something of marble that had come from the hand of Praxiteles, the white muslin sari in its gentle clinging folds showing against the now darkening wall of bamboo jungle. There was something about the Gulab, magnetic, omnipotent, that subdued men, that enslaved them; an indescribable subtlety of gentle strength, like the bronze-blue temper in steel. And her eyes—no one can describe the compelling eyes of the world, the awful eyes that in their fierce magnetism act on a man like bhang on a Ghazi or, like the eyes of Christ, smother him ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... action. (See ante, p. 30.) In all the social activities in which they have shared they have had to understand the material and processes involved. To start them in school with a rupture of this intimate association breaks the continuity of mental development, makes the student feel an indescribable unreality in his studies, and deprives him of the normal motive for interest ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... as I noted with quite indescribable emotion, a packet of letters and notes from Edith Bartlett, written on various occasions during our relation as lovers, that Edith, her great-granddaughter, held in her hand. I took them from her, and opening one, found it to be a note dated May 30, 1887, the very day ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... the dredging-machine was destined to arouse. When Mr. Roscorla read that simple narrative, he first stared with astonishment as though she were making some foolish joke. Directly he saw she was serious, however, his rage and mortification were indescribable. Here was this young man, not content with hanging about the girl so that neighbors talked, but actually imposing on her credulity, and making a jest of that engaged ring which ought to have been sacred to her. Mr. Roscorla ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... no longer restrain himself. He fell on the neck of his new-found mother and embraced her tenderly. Then he greeted his brothers and sisters heartily. The ecstacy of moments like these is indescribable. ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... founder of Millsaps College for men and women. The army of active suffragists was never large. Many women wanted the ballot but comparatively few were under conviction to work for it. To those who did, especially in early, trying days, belongs that indescribable exultation which is the portion of those who help onward a great revolutionary movement for the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... There was indescribable emotion. At first, they thought it a false alarm. Forgetting all discipline, they rushed forward to the end of the esplanade in order to see the soldiers. The ranks were broken, and as the dark line of troops appeared, ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... and insanity; Mistresses flog their slaves; Blood-bought luxuries; Borrowing of slaves; Meals of slaves; All comfort of slaves disregarded; Severance of companion lovers; Separation of parents and children; Slave espionage; Sufferings of slaves; Horrors of slavery indescribable. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... door, and then we could hear the handle being turned, and the bolt rattling as the wretched being tried to enter; and then there was a long time of silence both within and without. At last the tapping recommenced, and to our indescribable joy and gratitude, died slowly away again until it ceased to ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... crimson-lake enough to have emptied all the paint-boxes in the world, you might suppose, and the brightest of goldy yellows, and the greenest of soft transparent greens, such as no paint-box ever did, nor ever will, possess; and over all the most azure of blues, flecked with floating masses of soft indescribable white, looking to Elsie like the foamy soapsuds at the top of the tub when mother had been having a rare wash, but to Duncan like lumps of something he had once tasted and ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... gleams kept illuminating the room for more than an hour. Clara could not lie in bed. The activity of her brain became all but delirium; along her nerves, through all the courses of her blood, seemed to run fires which excited her with an indescribable mingling of delight and torment. She walked to and fro, often speaking aloud, throwing up her arms. She leaned from the open window and let the lightning play freely upon her face: she fancied it had the effect of restoring her wasted health. Whatever the cause, ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... moment the cottage-door opened, and a woman, whose sour, unpleasant countenance Ellen recognized, came hastily forth. She seemed not to heed the travellers; but the angler, his voice thrilling and quivering with indescribable emotion, addressed her. ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... been a cleaner "kill." In the warming glow of his satisfaction in himself, there kindled a new liking of a different sort for Plowden and Balder. He owed to them, at this belated hour of his life, a novel delight of indescribable charm. There came to him, from the woods, the shrill bucolic voice of the keeper, admonishing a wayward dog. He was conscious of even a certain tenderness for this keeper—and again the cry of "mark!" rose, strenuously ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... the young mother. "No, no, no!" she said, in an indescribable accent, and the child cried a little from ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... to the French-window, he said, with the intention of enjoying a quiet smoke, and no sooner had he seated himself and leaned back than an indescribable feeling of suffocation had crept upon him, and at the same time he had been aware of a curious loss of control over his jaws, so that he had been unable to prevent his mouth opening to its widest extent. When ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... Singleton's broken revolver. I carried a belaying pin. But, although we searched every foot of space, we found nothing. The formaldehyde with which Turner had fumigated the ship clung here tenaciously, and, mixed with the odors of bilge water and the indescribable heavy smells left by tropical cargoes, made me ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... indescribable weariness at times, were marked by some startling incidents, and by many worthy of record. The great object of Storms was to educate Inez, and he did his utmost in that direction, assisted by the bright intellect of the girl and her own ardent desire to ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... and amazement when they found that the parson and his wife had been invited to dinner and they themselves left out was indescribable. Never had such an insult been offered them. They had always been the first people of their class in the place, always held their heads up and condescended to the clergy, always been helped first at table, gone first ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... and almost dull, and there was no light in her face. She had made up her mind that something dreadful was going to happen to her, and that the end was coming soon. She could not have told why she felt it, and that made it worse. Her eyes had the indescribable look that one sees in those of a beautiful sick animal, the painful expression of an unintelligent suffering which the creature cannot understand. Regina, roused to act and face to face with danger, was brave, clever, and quick, but under the mysterious oppression of her forebodings she ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... one or more joints and fever. The knees, ankles, elbows and wrists are much affected, but it frequently goes through almost every joint in the body and sometimes repeats the terrible dose. I know, for I had it twice. The suffering, torture and pain sometimes are simply indescribable and almost too hard to bear. The joints become hot, red, painful, swollen and tender to touch and motion. It seems to hurt worse when anyone comes near, for the patient is afraid ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... is now oppressively warm; the heat is unlike anything I have felt in America. There is a scorching character about it which is indescribable, and the glare of the light is exceedingly painful to the eyes. The evenings are delightful, cool and clear, showing the lustre of ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... his eyes were fixed with cold intensity upon a fringe of gray across the coulee below the little pasture. To the nostrils of the outraged Happy Family was borne that indescribable aroma which betrays the presence of sheep; that aroma which sheepmen love and which cattlemen hate, and which a favorable wind will carry a ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... gentleman talked to him like a father; but Tommy, knowing he had me to throw the blame on, quietly told the old man in plain English to go to blazes. The expression on old Jimmy's face at thus being flouted by a black boy, was indescribable; he thought it his duty to persecute Tommy still farther, but now Tommy only laughed at him and said I made him do it, so old Jimmy gave him up at last as a bad job. Poor old fellow, he was always talking about his wife and children; I was to have ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... of Saxe-Pfennig stood in the wings, shaking in every limb. German oaths of indescribable vigour poured from his lips. In a group some feet away stood six muscular, short-sleeved stage-hands. It was they who had flung themselves on the general at the fall of the iron curtain and prevented him dashing round to attack the stalls with his ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... rather clearcut features, the exceeding brilliancy of her brown eyes, which seemed like diamonds set in jet, would, perhaps, have given to the whole rather too strong a character had not these eyes when veiled given to their dazzling rays a glamour of indescribable softness. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... were beginning to flee. He must fall back, and leave his camp, or be surrounded. His troops ran in wild disorder. Men, horses, baggage-wagons, ambulances, bounded over logs and stumps and through thickets in indescribable confusion. Colonel Peabody was shot from his horse, mortally wounded, and his troops, which had begun to show pluck and endurance, ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... another, until further confirmation was unnecessary! The Leyden bottle was charged with the precious fluid, from which both father and son received a shock as unmistakable as that from his electric battery at home. Franklin's fame was secured throughout the world. He went home with feelings of indescribable satisfaction. ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... 'tubing'] vi. 1. Hacking on an IPSC (Intel Personal SuperComputer) hypercube. "Louella's gone cubing *again*!!" 2. Hacking Rubik's Cube or related puzzles, either physically or mathematically. 3. An indescribable form of self-torture (see sense ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... she panted like a horse that is going up a steep hill, so that it almost broke one's heart to see it. Meanwhile, however, Monsieur Hamot had seized the ruffian by the throat, and they were rolling on the ground together, amidst a scene of indescribable confusion, and the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... not find Greenton, or Bayley's Four-Corners, as it is more usually designated, on any map of New England that I know of. It is not a town; it is not even a village; it is merely an absurd hotel. The almost indescribable place called Greenton is at the intersection of four roads, in the heart of New Hampshire, twenty miles from the nearest settlement of note, and ten miles from any railway station. A good location ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... was not aware of myself, until I felt them stirring under her look. If I commit faults in my life to come—if I am even guilty of crimes—she will bring the retribution, without (as I firmly believe) any conscious exercise of her own will. In one indescribable moment I felt all this—and I suppose my face showed it. The good artless creature was inspired by a sort of gentle alarm for me. "I am afraid the heat of the room is too much for you; will you try my smelling bottle?" I heard her say those kind words; ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... these treasures out of the window with indescribable disgust, and, feeling something like a purse in a side ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... during the receptions of the Tsar, who is travelling about Russia for the purpose of hypnotizing the men who are being sent to murder, indescribable enthusiasm is manifested amongst the people. As a matter of fact, something quite different is being manifested. From all sides one hears reports that in one place three Reservists have hanged themselves; in another spot, two more; in yet another, about a woman whose husband ...
— "Bethink Yourselves" • Leo Tolstoy
... during the last few months of his stay in the Rue Lesdiguieres. However, other more satisfying pleasures were his: "Unspeakable joys are showered on us by the exertion of our mental faculties; the quest of ideas, and the tranquil contemplation of knowledge; delights indescribable, because purely intellectual and impalpable to our senses. So we are obliged to use material terms to express the mysteries of the soul. The pleasure of striking out in some lonely lake of clear water, with forests, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... of some fifteen minutes' walk for the sturdy farmer who knows it well—and you find yourself lost in a region which has no features and no landmarks, where the earth lays snares for you and the mists betray you, and where even in bright sunshine there reigns an eternal and indescribable melancholy. The strangeness and wildness of the scene entered the boy's consciousness, and brought with them a kind of exaltation. He stood gazing; that inner life of his, of which Louie, his constant companion, knew as good ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... torment—the cry is a 'drop of water,' the slightest relief to unutterable woes; and that a messenger may be sent to warn his relatives, lest they should be plunged into the same torment. The impassable gulf defies the vain request, while the despised Christian reposes in everlasting and indescribable enjoyment. This little volume was very popular; nine editions were printed and sold in the author's lifetime, besides pirated copies. Bunyan's feelings and mode of preaching are well described in the Grace Abounding,[196] and will be felt by every attentive reader of his ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and Truey leaped out from the cap-tent into the arms of their father— while the mutual congratulations of Hans and Hendrik, Swartboy and Totty, produced for some moments a scene of joyful confusion quite indescribable. ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... left no doubt that he was satisfied with things as they were—and would be deeply resentful of change. There was still in his countenance some trace of his ancestor's belief in the Divine right of kings! It showed in his narrow, thought-proof forehead, and a certain indescribable attitude which he held toward others, and which separated him from his neighbors. Instinctively, the people who met him, knew he lacked human sympathy and understanding, but he had a hold on the people of his constituency, for through his ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... usual, and his voice had a note of terrible hurt. It was as if all the ties of seven years of vicissitude had been arbitrarily cast off by his old partner; that they had become master and man. His words conveyed an indescribable ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... Bills notifying the approaching entertainment are stuck up at the corners of the streets; and every one is anxious to obtain a lista de los toros. When the season of the toros[36] commences, a bull-fight takes place every Monday, and then the whole city of Lima is thrown into a state of indescribable excitement. The ladies prepare their finest dresses for the occasion, and they consider it the greatest possible misfortune if anything occurs to prevent them going to the bull-fight: indeed, a Monday passed at home in the season of the toros would be regarded as a lost day in the life ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... away which she knew would be unwise to gratify. She was conscious of a certain softening charm, a magnetism that she had sometimes felt in the days when she first knew him. She realized, too, that then the charm had not been mixed with the indescribable, intimate quality ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... staggered and shook like a stricken thing, and Vane opened his eyes. Already she was beginning to list a little, and he saw the gaping hole in her side, around which floated an indescribable litter of small objects and bits of wood. The torpedo had hit her forward, but with the headway she still had the vessel drifted on, and the litter of debris came directly underneath Vane. With a sudden narrowing of his eyes, he saw what was left of a girl turning slowly over and over ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... chestnut hair; her absolutely regular features had the proud Tennysonian cast. But the coldness of Tennysonian damsels was not hers. Whether she had Latin blood in her veins, or whether Nature had peculiarly gifted her out of sheer caprice, she possessed in a high degree that indescribable demeanour, at once a defiance and a surrender, a question and an answer, a confession and a denial, which is the universal weapon of women of Latin race in the battle of the sexes, but of which Englishwomen seem to ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... his eyes blue as corn flowers, his sleeves and leggings dyed with fruit stains, his hands clammy with the sweet juice of apples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere about him that atmosphere of cider which at its first return each season has such an indescribable fascination for those who have been born and bred ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... yellow like the yellow paint on the ancient shingled house-front at Kidd's Pines. I suppose the white window-facings and doorway and pillars, and the green blinds, and the frame of cathedral elms, partly account for the indescribable sweetness of that yellow. I can't liken it to anything but primroses in a forest, seen in the level, secret ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... stillness and solitude, and when the body is in complete repose, there pour in on eye and ear floods of impressions so quickly varying that the mind feels quite unable to record them, and there is finally nothing left behind but a vague and indescribable sensation of all that is grand and beautiful and melodious in nature. For there are vast heights and gloomy depths and recesses, and varied forms of falling waters, and in the general surroundings everything to convey exalted ideas of grandeur to the mind, but grandeur ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... often calling out words, which we have since understood to be names of liquids peculiar to the country, viz—'port,' 'sherry,' and 'lemonade.' Our curiosity being amply gratified, the short fat native, who had first addressed us, marched up to me, and to my indescribable alarm offered to introduce me to his daughter, a young savage of about seventeen, who he pointed out sitting in a nearly civilized attitude on a legitimate sofa. Perceiving me shudder at the proposal, for I had heard that the New Zealanders, and other ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 287, December 15, 1827 • Various
... yet dared to utter his suspicions. They awaited this name of Tremorel; and yet, pronounced as it was in the middle of the night, in this great sombre room, by this at least strange personage, it made them shudder with an indescribable fright. ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... of men were assisting at a dog-fight. The scene was one of indescribable confusion. In the center of the tumult the dogs, obscure in a cloud of dust, rolled over and over, howling, yarring, tearing each other with sickening ferocity. About them the hardly less ferocious men shouted, cursed and struck, encouraged the animals with ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... either side the blooming cheeks, whose Nature-grown roses were unusual in this world-weary vicinity of Broadway. A sweet mouth with a sensuous smile at one corner, and a barely perceptible droop of pathos at the other, lent an indescribable piquance to her dimpled smile. The blue orbs which raised to his own with a Sphinxian laugh in their azure depths thrilled him—Holloway, the blase, the hardened theatrical manager, flattered and cajoled by hundreds of beautiful women on the quest ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... thus paints him:— "In M. de la Rochefoucauld there was ever an indescribable something. From his infancy he always wanted to be mixed up with plots, at a time when he could not understand even the smallest interests (which has indeed never been his weak point,) or comprehend greater ones, which in another sense has never been his strong point. He was never ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... met; few could resist the appeal. Many readers will be familiar with the early portrait by Maclise; but his friends tell us how little that did justice to the lively play of feature, 'the spirited air and carriage' which were indescribable. On the top of a mail coach, on a fresh morning, they must have won the favour of his fellow travellers more easily than Alfred Jingle won the hearts of the Pickwickians. And beneath the radiant cheerfulness of his ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... their direction.' He had scarce spoken when a light so vivid and dazzling that it seemed the whole lustre of the fiery element was concentrated therein broke around us, filling the whole atmosphere, and covering rock, tree and mountain with a glare indescribable. The mule of the peasant tumbled prostrate, while the horse I rode reared himself perpendicularly, and turning round dashed down the hill at headlong speed which for some time it was impossible to check. The ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... smothered in rice and onions; the second with a nondescript melange, flesh, fish, and fowl apparently, strongly flavoured with garlic; the third bore a dish of jerked beef, cut into long shreds, and swimming in seba or lard; and the fourth bore a large dish full of that indescribable thing known by those who read Don Quixote, as an olla podrida. The sable handmaidens began to circulate round the table, and every one helped himself to the dish that he most fancied. At length they placed them on ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... not attempt exhaustively to describe the indescribable. It is enough to assure the sober reader that, grotesque and foolish as it may seem, this is absolutely true, and to record that after the glimpse I had of the Wenuses emerging from the Crinoline in which they had come to ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... drove on, and I was alone upon the road, I looked carefully round to ascertain whether the monkey had followed me. To my indescribable relief I saw it nowhere. I can't describe easily what a shock I had received, and my sense of genuine gratitude on finding myself, as I supposed, quite ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... from the table with his head against the stone floor. The fall and the force of the blow had been so skilfully calculated by the unfortunate young man that his skull was split in two. The grief of the Warden was indescribable. Having called me to the office, the Warden, without shaking hands with me, reproached me in angry and harsh terms for having deceived him, and he regained his calm, only after my hearty apologies and promises that such accidents would not happen again. I ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... road. And in this way I have gone on for thirteen years, preaching and teaching, visiting the sick, and ministering to them, with Winifred by my side heartening me on. Occasionally I am visited with fits of indescribable agony, generally on the night before the Sabbath; for I then ask myself, how dare I, the outcast, attempt to preach the word of God? Young man, my tale is told; you ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... of love herself, in the days of her freshest youth; but on the other hand, the childish innocent glance, the nobly-formed forehead, the rosy mouth, of which the coral lips were rather indicated than displayed, and an indescribable something in her whole appearance, gave her an air of purity and dignified modesty calculated to prevent her beauty from exciting the slightest sensual thought. Her hair, of a dark gold colour, fell in long tresses around a snow white and exquisitely moulded neck; a gown of green silk enveloped ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... eyes fraught with a mild and lustrous languor; the cheeks, pale in their wonted mood as alabaster, yet eloquent at times with warm and passionate blushes. The lips, redder than aught on earth which shares both hue and softness; and, more than all, the deep and indescribable expression which genius prints on every lineament of those, who claim that rarest and ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... temperament importunate. I was restless, absent, and thoughtful: I wept and sighed for a happiness I had no idea of, though at the same time highly sensible of some deficiency. This situation is indescribable, few men can even form any conception of it, because, in general, they have prevented that plenitude of life, at once tormenting and delicious. My thoughts were incessantly occupied with girls and women, but in a manner peculiar to myself: these ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... quills of the porcupine; his forehead was somewhat narrow, but his features were neither plain nor coarse; there was, however, a startled, frightened look about them, and an otherwise painful and indescribable expression, which told too plainly that the ruling power of the intellect had been overthrown, and that the living machine could no longer be altogether held responsible for its acts. Such, in appearance, was Lawrence Brindister: had he been of sane mind, he would have been the lord of Lunnasting ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... marched briskly past the tussocks where Gunga Dass had snared the crows, and out in the direction of the smooth white sand beyond. My first step from the tufts of dried grass showed me how utterly futile was any hope of escape; for, as I put my foot down, I felt an indescribable drawing, sucking motion of the sand below. Another moment and my leg was swallowed up nearly to the knee. In the moonlight the whole surface of the sand seemed to be shaken with devilish delight at my disappointment. I struggled clear, sweating with terror and exertion, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... sufficient food, nor love, nor schools, nor any prospect at all in life but the insufficient bread of servitude. It is a result that endears religion and purity to the sweating employer, and leads unimaginative bishops, who have never missed a meal in their lives, and who know nothing of the indescribable bitterness of a handicapped entry into this world, to draw a complacent contrast with irreligious France. It is a result that must necessarily be recognized in its reality, and faced by these men who will presently emerge to rule the world; men who will ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... to cross the frontier?" My astonishment was indescribable. "Young man, you have made a blunder of some sort. I am not a Socialist or an Anarchist. I have never been forbidden to cross the frontier of any country. Your Chancellor is one of the best friends I have in the world. I went to ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... CHILD!" repeated the Margrave with a burst, almost a shriek of indescribable agony. "Ah, what did ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... finer and more impressive beauty of maturity. As the light of the setting sun fell full upon her face it seemed almost transparent, and even the unobserving must have perceived that some deep experience of the sadness of life had added to her character an indescribable charm. ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... last sufficiently accustomed to the light to distinguish the relics left by the prisoners: here a pair of stays of which some female prisoner had divested herself, there a red cockade, all kinds of articles of clothing steeped in slime of indescribable foulness; and cowering at one end of the corridor a dozen prisoners waiting to know their fate. They were more respectable than usual, and not apparently of a very sanguinary type. They were all men. To-day no less than a hundred women were marched down the streets ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... gratified. He declared almost from the first that, when sitting with me, he felt his will power strengthened. 'You are doing me good,' he said. Now, as my professed object in contriving the sittings had been to lift up Chichester toward my level,"—with indescribable bitterness Mr. Harding dwelt on these last words,—"I could only express rejoicing. And this I did with successful hypocrisy. Nevertheless, I was greatly irritated. For it seemed to me that, when we sat, Chichester triumphed over me. He obtained his desire while mine remained ungratified. ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... looked after her for a moment with a frown. In some indescribable way, the woman half impressed, half irritated him. She had always the air of keeping something in the background. He followed her out on to the little ridge of beach, a few minutes after she had left. The mist was still drifting about. ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a fact simply. Essentially she was perhaps of no tangible substance; a spirit, a dream, a frenzy, a conception, an aroma, an epitomized sex, a light of the eye, a parting of the lips. God only knew what she really was; Pierston did not. She was indescribable. ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... case at the first to which she applied, and the Intelligencer had called out to the invisible expectants in the adjoining room, "Anny wan wants to do giner'l housewark in Charlsbrudge?" there came from the maids invoked so loud, so fierce, so full a "No!" as shook the lady's heart with an indescribable shame and dread. The name that, with an innocent pride in its literary and historical associations, she had written at the heads of her letters, was suddenly become a matter of reproach to her; and she was almost tempted to conceal thereafter that she lived in Charlesbridge, and to ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... neared the coast of Massachusetts, and the land-breeze brought to his eager nostrils the odors of his native orchards, or the aromatic fragrance of the pine, and the indescribable impression, on all his senses, of home, the fresh love of country rushed purely through his veins, bubbled warmly about the place where his heart used to beat, and rose to his brain in soft, sweet imaginations. Vivid pictures of past and future; identical in all their essential features, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... children and administer the rites of his Church to the tortured prisoners. On one occasion he performed the sacred office for a dying Huron with some rain or dewdrops which were still clinging to an ear of green corn which had been thrown to him for food. After indescribable misery, he was taken to Fort Orange, where the Dutch helped him to escape to France, but he returned to Canada in the ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... flowers out, but a mass of wild roses, and still some May tulips bloomed, while from the meadow beneath them came that indescribable freshness which ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... sun, there were certain advantages to the traveller at this season; it was unnecessary to carry a large supply of water, as it could be obtained at intervals of a few miles. There was an indescribable delight in the cool night, when, in the perfect certainty of fine weather, we could rest in the open air with the clear bright starlit sky above us. There were no mosquitoes, neither were there any of the insect plagues of the tropics; the air was too dry for the gnat tribe, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... back to the states. At the expiration of two months he wrote David that his book had been accepted. In time ten bound copies of his novel, his allotment from the publishers, brought him a thrill of indescribable pleasure. The next mail brought papers with glowing reviews and letters of commendation and congratulations. Next came a good-sized check, and the information that his ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... a good swimmer, Joe—be not alarmed, and you will not be hurt," said Glenn, half inclined to laugh at his man's indescribable contortions and grimaces, and apprehending ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... prophets whose model he had proclaimed himself to be. Jesus and John were in the second or third—he was not quite sure which—Moses was in the sixth, while Abraham alone had the supreme distinction of residing in the Seventh Heaven. There, at the apex of indescribable glory, Mohammed had entered the awful presence of his Maker, Who, after some chit-chat, charged him to see that all Moslems should hereafter prostrate themselves in prayer toward the Temple of Solomon five times a day. The truth of this narrative rests upon two ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... which occurred October 22, 1827, in the forty-fifth year of his age. The closing months of his life were rendered memorable by an extraordinary triumph of Christian faith and patience, as well as of the power of mind over matter. His bodily suffering and agonies were indescribable, but, like one of the old martyrs in the midst of the flames, he seemed to forget them all in the greatness of his spiritual joy. In a letter written shortly after his death, Mrs. Payson gives a touching account of the tender and thoughtful concern for her happiness which marked his last ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... scoured. The walls have the appearance of having been pawed over by new relays of dirty fingers daily for ten years. This is a very peculiar appearance at many nasty places out of Sicily, and we really do not know its pathology. You tread loathingly an indescribable earthen floor, and your eye, on entering the apartment, is arrested by a nameless production of the fictile art, certainly not of Etruscan form, which is invariably placed on the bolster of the truck-bed destined presently for your devoted head. Oh! to do justice ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... answer; he felt, moreover, a singular emotion at the aspect of the man he was attempting to convert. An extraordinary revolution had taken place on Piombo's face; his wrinkles, contracting into narrow lines, gave him a look of indescribable cruelty, and he cast upon the notary the glance of a tiger. The baroness was mute and passive. Ginevra, calm and resolute, waited silently; she knew that the notary's voice was more potent than hers, and she seemed to have decided to say nothing. At the moment when Roguin ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... when the courtiers seemed to sink into the carpets and divans and silken and down coverlets; when the sweet-smelling incense rose from the golden censers and intoxicated the brain; when a hundred servants made ready the banquet of indescribable luxury, and carried it in silver dishes, alabaster bowls, and crystal goblets; when youths and maidens, with arms entwined, crowned each other with wreaths of roses; when the fanfares sounded, and the cymbals clashed, and song gushed from maidens' throats; and when at length Pharaoh ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... there was one trait of the mother—and only one; the thin and pallid elder daughter had her parent's Cairngorm eye: the blooming and luxuriant younger girl had her contour of jaw and chin—perhaps a little softened, but still imparting an indescribable hardness to the countenance ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... loud hoarse cries, heavy blows, and trampling feet, the indescribable horror and confusion of a fierce fight fought with blind rage ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford
... thought that, beautiful as it all was in theory, wonderful as was the indescribable power of Islam, it gave few, if any, of its children the true conception of God. They learned nothing of the tender Father, of the beauty of Aton. In Islam there is no consciousness of God in the song of the thrush to its mate, no sacredness in the bud of a lily. In ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... exhausted by hunger, thirst, fatigue, wet, the burning rays of the sun, and sickness arising from such complicated sufferings, the unfortunate wanderers, after a voyage of thirty-two days, had the indescribable joy of beholding the coast of New Zealand, and entering the Torres Straits. They landed on a little uninhabited island near the coast, where they found fine flavoured fruits, oysters, and the most delicious water, all ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... had seen it at the race-course. And now it came to him as a shock after his visions of her early girlhood. He thought there was a certain vulgarity in it which, he had not observed before—a slight coarsening of its expression, an indescribable degeneracy even under the glow of its developed beauty. With her full red lips and curving throat and dancing eyes, she was smiling into the face of the man who was sitting by her side. Her smile was a significant ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... and the surface of the floor was nearly covered with congelations of the purest white, resembling in shape, size, and beauty the leaf of the moss-rose. A fantastic conglomeration of irregular, round, and convoluted pillars, running into each other in indescribable ramifications, formed the outer wall, whose semi-translucent crystal, like opal glass, allowed the rays of the rising sun to shower a mild and silvery radiance upon the hidden wonders ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... choking laughter, his figure swaying to and fro like a pine in a storm. The laughter, an indescribable and most dreadful sound, became low, choked, a mere rattle in the throat, died into silence, and the laugher crashed to the ground like a pine for which the storm ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... indescribable something in my relation with my readers that is sweet beyond words to tell. I look upon you, the readers, as brothers and sisters; yes, more than ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... bethought me of looking immediately before my nose, and there, sure enough, confronting me at the table sat a personage nondescript, although not altogether indescribable. His body was a wine-pipe, or a rum-puncheon, or something of that character, and had a truly Falstaffian air. In its nether extremity were inserted two kegs, which seemed to answer all the purposes of legs. For arms there dangled from the upper portion ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... last sounds of her voice and her lute died softly away upon the still night air, an indescribable elevation appeared in the girl's countenance. She looked up rapturously into the far, star-bright sky; her lip quivered, her dark eyes filled with tears, and her bosom heaved with the excess of the emotions ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... consider the magnitude of the change that has come about with the era of machinery and the indescribable increase which it has brought to man's power over his environment. There is no need to recite here in detail the marvelous record of mechanical progress that constituted the "industrial revolution" of the eighteenth century. The utilization of coal for the smelting of iron ore; the ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... necessary to avoid the probable dangers by returning to the deeper ocean. Ever following a course of approaching and then leaving the coast, and experiencing another heavy thunder storm, which tore the sails to pieces, it was with indescribable joy that the coast of Nova Scotia came to view on the 7th at break of day. As soon as the anchoring place of Halifax was reached the commodore signaled to the fleet to gather and sail before the wind. Now those ships came along and rejoined the fleet which had become lost in the fogs and had ...
— The Voyage of The First Hessian Army from Portsmouth to New York, 1776 • Albert Pfister
... Carlyle's writings in their youth, without having experienced an indescribable and irresistible stimulation, to accomplish some real work, to make some strenuous endeavour "before the night cometh." Carlyle's contempt for sloth, stings; his bitter words are a tonic, they scourge, encourage, and at times plead with poetic fervour. "Think of living. Thy life wert thou the ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... kettle's true character. When the time comes for us to part it may be that her little ladyship will be still more frank, and let me know, in polite language, that seeing the last of her borrowed nephew is "good riddance of bad rubbish." Nevertheless, her extraordinary, though indescribable, cleverness has woven a kind of web about us all; and whether I am able to respect the L.C.P. or not, I was conscious of passionate gratitude to her as she arrested me with the bad ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... these Indians reads like a hideous nightmare. Absolutely no forceful and effective protest seems to have been made against the indescribable wrongs perpetrated. The gold discoveries of 1849 brought into the country a class of adventurers, gamblers, liquor sellers, and camp followers of the vilest description. The Indians became helpless victims in the hands of these infamous wretches, and even ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... little friend's predilection for the smell of a stable, but when the latter saw their looks, she blushed up to the roots of her hair, and her only way out of the difficulty was to order the riding-master, in a very authoritative manner, to take the horse back to the stable. He merely bowed, with an indescribable smile, and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Thursday I went with Mr. Ticknor to Chester by railway. It is quite an indescribable old town, and I feel at last as if I had had a glimpse of old England. The wall encloses a large space within the town, but there are numerous houses and streets not included within its precincts. Some of the principal streets pass under the ancient gateways; and ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... indescribable depression, the elder son then repeated the same promise he had given before, ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... marching in upon an unprotected country. At the head come the motley and strange-looking migrants—largely refugee Jews—from the far Russian Empire and the regions of Hungary and Roumania. At the daily rate of 2,800 it would take this indescribable assortment more than 166 days to pass in single file. Then the Italians would consume about eighty days more. For over eight months you would have watched so large a proportion of illiteracy, incompetency, and insensibility to American ideals, that you would be tempted to despair of the Republic. ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... deed," he went on, in a changed voice, and after a momentary pause, "it would be impossible for me, and perhaps for any other man, to say; but that he did do it is evident, and that is all I mean to assert. The rest I leave for wiser heads than mine." And turning from me with an indescribable look that to my reason, if not to my head, seemed to belie his words, he offered his arm to his bewildered sister and quietly led her towards ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... the strain and let myself go again, only in the opposite way. So I went out, and mounted like a sudden flame, and saw myself for a moment like a thin streak of white mist rising in the air; while the comfort and relief I experienced by regaining my light spirit-condition, were indescribable. It was because I had, for want of skill, dematerialised myself without sufficient deliberation, that I had thus rapidly mounted in the air. After an interval I dreamt that, wishing to see what A. would do in case I appeared to ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... Europe, chiefly on foot, during the spring of 1851, and met Kossuth in Pesth; his mother was then living there. "To say that Kossuth is beloved here seems hardly necessary after what I have seen. He is idolized. Every word and trait of his character is remembered with an indescribable affection ..."; but they all acknowledged, he added, that he did not possess the necessary gifts for a revolutionary leader. Still, he moved his countrymen in so stirring a manner that they would have followed him anywhere. "He 'agitated' the whole land, and there is not ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... covered with a varnished cloth, standing on the right side of the room, and beside which a ponderous arm-chair is raised a few inches, forms Fetter's tribune. Hanging from the wall, close behind this, is a powder-horn and flask, several old swords, a military hat somewhat broken, and sundry other indescribable things, enough to make one's ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... allus says, baby-girl," answered Jim, "so I got to believe it. And if I didn't, there wouldn't be no use o' livin'—not a mite." There was a vibrating tenderness in the man's voice, and an indescribable pathos in its tone, as he spoke, that caused me instinctively to turn my head and ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... than of the shadow of life. It is a world of images and refractions, of visions and presentiments, a world which swims in dim and opalescent mists—where gestures are adored and every footfall is charged with indescribable intimations; where, "even in the swaying of a hand or the dropping of unbound hair, there is less suggestion of individual action than of a divinity living within, shaping an elaborate beauty in a dream for its own delight." It is, for those who inhabit it, a world as exclusively preoccupying ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... laughter—such laughter as is heard in asylums for the insane. The persons about him pointed at the object in his hand and their merriment increased as he dropped it and it went rolling among their feet. They danced about it with gestures grotesque and attitudes obscene and indescribable. They struck it with their feet, urging it about the room from wall to wall; pushed and overthrew one another in their struggles to kick it; cursed and screamed and sang snatches of ribald songs as the battered head bounded about the room as if in terror ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... towards the lodging-house and pollute the polluted air further with the foulness of their language; the drink mounts into unstable heads; and presently—especially on Saturday nights—there are hoarse growls as from rough-throated beasts, shrill shrieks, and a running chorus of indescribable grossness. Drunken men are quarrelling in the street, drunken women yell and stagger, and the hideous discord fills the night on all sides. No item of corruption is spared the children; and the vile hurly-burly ceases only at midnight. The children will always try to sneak through ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... In a short time the mutineers opened their fire from a 9-pounder, the shot striking the crest of the mud wall, and gliding over into the puckah-roofed barrack. This was about ten o'clock; a number of ladies and children were outside the barrack. The consternation among them was indescribable. As the day advanced, the firing became hotter. Shrieks and cries most heartrending burst from them as the shot struck the walls of the barrack. This was the commencement of the horrible sufferings they had to endure, and which only terminated with their yet more terrible destruction. They soon ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston |
