"Inscrutable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I'm a philosopher, Ida. I've held communion with the Unfathomable, and watched the exfoliation of the Inscrutable; and, you know, these things are altogether beyond the orbit of the girl-mind. Now clear off, like a good fellow, and ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... the very beginning of my story with the closest attention. His face was the most impassive that I have ever seen; ordinarily as inscrutable as a bronze mask; but to me, who knew him intimately, there was a certain something—a change of colour, perhaps, or an additional sparkle of the eye—that told me when his curious passion for investigation ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... the disorder, quietly directing the incompetent militia officers in their tasks of collecting their men; and behind him, splendidly horsed and caparisoned, cantered the tall Oneida, known as Thomas Spencer the Interpreter, calm, composed, inscrutable eyes fixed on his beloved ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... gallant young colonel. She was no flower to be worn and flung aside; and she meant that Colonel Churchill should know it. She could be gracious to him, as to any other man; but she quickly made the limits of her indulgence clear. To all his amorous advances she presented a smiling and inscrutable front; his ardour was as unwelcome as it ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... queen buried her face in her hands; the princess had knelt again and prayed; the king leaned his head against the back of the chair, pale as a corpse, and with his eyes closed. Napoleon alone stood erect; his face was calm and inscrutable; his glances were turned toward the windows, and he seemed to listen eagerly to ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... chauffeur wasn't cross, but only concentrated. If I had to drive a powerful, untamed car like this, up and down roads like that, I should certainly get motor-car face, a kind of inscrutable, frozen mask that not all the cold cream in the world could ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... thirty-two, he could pretend to ignorance of this world of emotion. About his knowledge let it be enough to say that what he had learned had come unpursued and unpurchased, and was without intolerable memories; broken to the realities of sex, he was still troubled by its inscrutable history. He went through life full of a strange respect for certain feminine weakness and a very simple terror of certain feminine strength. He had held to a rather lukewarm faith that something remained in him to be called forth, and that the voice that should call would be heard ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... me to moor opposite the ruins of Fort Gibraltar? What tempts the fly into the spider's web and the fish with a wide ocean for play-ground into one small net? I know there is a consoling fashion of ascribing our blunders to the inscrutable wisdom of a long-suffering Providence; but common-sense forbids I should call evil good, deify my errors, and give thanks for what befalls me ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... impression it gave the beholder of invincible calm and self-mastery, with a certain mysterious hint of power and a promise of unswervingness. His gaze held no suggestion of concealment; yet for the deeper thoughts that move the spirit of man, to those who knew him well his mild blue eyes remained inscrutable, while his courtesy to all made one forget that his words were few, and that of himself he had ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Irish absentee, or, more accurately, a refugee, since he had made himself so odious on his ample estate that he could not live there. How on earth he should have set about collecting books is one of the inscrutable mysteries which ever surround the diagnosis of this peculiar malady. Setting aside his using his books by reading them as out of the question, he yet was never known to indulge in that fondling and ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... when he sees the people smile and grows angry when they grow angry. Now and then appears an inscrutable genius who finds out what is brewing in their brains and brings it to a head. He is the epoch maker. Such an one was that little Corsican, who gave a stagnant pool the storm it needed, until he became overfed and mistook his ambition for a ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... chair and cried comfortably till a noise in the shop stopped her, and looking through the dusky books she saw a man waiting. She got up and went in hastily, looking keenly at his face to find how long he had been there, and how much he had seen. It wore, however, an inscrutable gravity. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... caught first the roses, then fell upon Ariel, and he stopped stock-still with one arm outstretched, remaining for perhaps ten seconds in that attitude, while she, her lips parted, her eyes lustrous, returned his gaze with a look that was as inscrutable as ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... soothingly. "Do not take on like this! God's ways are inscrutable; perchance He has broken the match off for your ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... particulars—distorted particulars—over from Liverpool, and all the evening sheets had their portion of extravagance and sensation. General Armour became a little more erect and austere as he caught sight of these placards, and Mrs. Armour groaned inwardly; but their faces were inscrutable, and they quietly conducted their charge, minus her blanket, to the train which was to take them to St. Albans, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... certainly not classical music, but it was amusing; and, as everybody joined in the choruses, the company consisted entirely of performers, with no audience except the cows in the adjacent pasture. Even Mrs. Vernon was singing, though with an inscrutable look in her grey eyes hardly ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... even the hearts of heroes, appeared now for a moment to overshadow the great mind of Gustavus Adolphus. "If we decide upon battle," said he, "the stake will be nothing less than a crown and two electorates. Fortune is changeable, and the inscrutable decrees of Heaven may, for our sins, give the victory to our enemies. My kingdom, it is true, even after the loss of my life and my army, would still have a hope left. Far removed from the scene of action, defended by a powerful ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... a good many inscrutable cards in my time," the solicitor of Gray's Inn observed to his elder brother, in the course of fraternal converse; "but I think for inscrutability you put the topper on the lot. What do you expect to get out of this Haygarth estate? Come, Phil, let us have your ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... recollection, in the glances which, from time to time, he cast upon me. Some emotion played upon his features, in which, as my fears conceived, there was a tincture of resentment and ferocity. In vain I called my usual sophistries to my aid. In vain I pondered on the inscrutable nature of my peculiar faculty. In vain I endeavoured to persuade myself, that, by telling the truth, instead of entitling myself to Ludloe's approbation, I should only excite his anger, by what he could not but deem an attempt to ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... of the many degrees and kinds of human intercourse, there is also the unknown or over-ruling law of God or nature which gives order to it in its infinite greatness, and variety in its infinitesimal minuteness—both equally inscrutable to us. We need no longer discuss whether philology is to be classed with the Natural or the Mental sciences, if we frankly recognize that, like all the sciences which are concerned with man, it has a double aspect,—inward ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... rent by the scream of war. Hoofs thundered, swords flashed, men yelled, and arrows shot through the great cloud of dust that rose suddenly as from an explosion. In the front of the charge the Italian and the Norman rode side by side, the inscrutable black eyes and the calm olive features beside the Norman's terrible young figure, with its white glowing face and fair hair streaming on the wind, and wide, deep eyes like blue steel, and the quivering nostrils of ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... and two first-class ducks. These animals are to be cooked and eaten this evening in Mathiesen's establishment, and I invite this honored company to join me there. Personally I look upon the disappearance of these arms as an all-wise intervention of Providence, which sets its own inscrutable wisdom up against the wisdom which we would otherwise have heard from the lips of ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... found mistress and maid hanging over the baby's bed with white faces and trembling lips, hand in hand, like sisters. He examined the child silently, swiftly, looking with a face of inscrutable blankness at the clinical thermometer with which he had taken her temperature. "Just turn her so she'll lie comfortably," he told 'Stashie, "and then you stay with her a moment. I want a talk ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... The inscrutable means by which the Salamander executed these feats with the most complete success and safety, were not to be divulged; and as neither of our respectable friends felt desirous of emulating the fair exhibitant, they declined the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... therewith, To Odin, to my father, take this ring, Memorial of me, whether saved or no; And tell the Heaven-born Gods how thou hast seen Me sitting here below by Hela's side, Crown'd, having honour among all the dead." He spake, and raised his hand, and gave the ring. And with inscrutable regard the queen Of Hell beheld them, and the ghosts stood dumb. But Hermod took the ring, and yet once more Kneel'd and did homage to the solemn queen; Then mounted Sleipner, and set forth to ride Back, through the astonish'd ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Burmese Buddhas had just been put up, and bore the indignity of being knocked down for nine-and-sixpence the pair with dreamy, inscrutable simpers; Horace only waited for the final lot marked by the Professor—an old Persian copper bowl, inlaid with silver and engraved round the rim with an ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... they crossed the threshold of his chamber. More silent than ever, more benignly silent, did the hush about him seem to Dion; more profound were his peace and serenity. He and the child had surely withdrawn a little farther from all that was not intended, but that, for some inscrutable reason, had come to be. His winged sandals had carried him still farther away. As Dion looked at him he seemed ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... I can't believe in any creed of which the central doctrine is that God who is Joy should have had to suffer. Perhaps it was so; in some inscrutable way I believe it may have been so, but I don't understand how it was possible. So I leave it alone; my ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... of thread-like filaments round the prismatic columns, and finally pass into all the cells. "A complete knowledge of all the mysteries which have been gradually unfolded from the days of Galvani to those of Faraday, and of many others which are still inscrutable to us, is exhibited in this structure." Well may Mr. Darwin say, "It is impossible to conceive by what steps these wondrous organs have been produced. We see the purpose—that a special apparatus should be prepared; but we have ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... flesh made me tremble, and I knew the madness was creeping over me, but I gritted my teeth, and our eyes met again. The blush had gone, but not the smile. It was not now, however, the smile of a frank maiden but of an inscrutable and dominating woman. I knew the difference, for instinct is more than experience, and I chilled into the yokel again ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... not the result of our inductions of the tendencies of actions; nor were they derived from others, and impressed by authority and example. Consequently, the moral sentiments are instinctive, or ultimate and inscrutable facts. ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... cold towards their wives, it is ill with them, but if they are warm towards them, it is well; therefore wives are continually devising means whereby the men may become warm and not cold towards them; and these means they devise with a sagacity inscrutable to the men." As they said this, the dove was heard to make a sort of moaning; and immediately the wives said, "This is a token to us that we have a wish to communicate greater arcana, but that it is not allowable: probably you will reveal to the men what you have heard." I ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... the presence of Nas Ta Bega, and perhaps Withers had likewise. At this juncture the Indian rose to his full height, and he folded his arms to stand with the somber pride of a chieftain while his dark, inscrutable eyes were riveted upon Shefford. At that moment he seemed magnificent. How infinitely more he seemed than just a common Indian who had chanced to befriend a white man! The difference was obscure to Shefford. But he felt that it was ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... below the summer villa of his Kaiserly and Kingly Majesty, Francis Joseph, and flow away northward, through the rest of his game-preserve, into the Traunsee. It is an imperial playground, and such as I would consent to hunt the chamois in, if an inscrutable Providence had made me a kingly kaiser, or even a plain king or an unvarnished kaiser. But, failing this, I was perfectly content to spend a few idle days in fishing for trout and catching grayling, at such times and places as the ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... house—under circumstances that bowed his head in shame. She has not seen fit to return, or to give information of her whereabouts. I have tried to serve my God all my days," said the Reverend Saunders; "I do not know why this should have been visited upon me. But His ways are inscrutable. His purpose ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... transmission of defects as well as excellences, there exists another law which restrains deviations from the normal type, which extinguishes the errant traits, and reestablishes the primitive characters of the organism. The combined and alternate action of these two laws may produce some of the inscrutable phenomena of hereditary transmission. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... Spake so thy spirit speech should understand, And with a dread "He's dead!" awaked a peal Of frenzied bells along the vacant ways Of thy poor earthly heart; waked thee to steal, Like dawn distraught upon unhappy days, To prove nought, nothing? Was it Time's large voice Out of the inscrutable future whispered so? Or but the horror of a little noise Earth wakes at dead of night? Or does Love know When his sweet wings weary and droop, and even In sleep cries audibly a shrill remorse? Or, haply, was it I who out of dream Stole but a little where shadows course, Called back to ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... at the last day of the world it will be made quite clear to us."[608] If such judgments were more often visited upon the right persons, perhaps the ways of Providence would not have so generally come to be regarded as inscrutable. ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... an appropriate judgment upon the republic, to punish it, for suffering the ladies of Paris to go so thinly clothed. Monsieur O—— heard her very patiently throughout, and then observed, that the ways of Heaven were inscrutable, that human ingenuity was baffled, in attempting to draw inferences from its visitations, and that it did not appear to him at least, that an offence which was assuredly calculated to inspire sensations of warmth and tenderness, was appropriately punished ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... she—in fact, since the baby, he is even more so—and derived much happiness from their mutual study and speculation. All theories were advanced from all countries, and suggestions, wise and otherwise, came from thousands of sources. And so in the year 1900 the thing remains. As inscrutable to us have been the curious symbols appearing upon Mars of late as have apparently been to them a sign language attempted on the pampas. It is now proposed to show to them the outline of a gigantic man, and if Providence has seen fit to ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... he again began, and again the pipe was laid down, for Robinson was much honoured. "I come here hot from a scene of domestic woe, which has robbed me of all political discretion, and made the paper duty to me an inscrutable mystery. The worthy Geese here assembled see before them a man who has been terribly injured; one in whose mangled breast Fate has fixed her sharpest dagger, and poisoned the blade before she fixed it." "No—no—no." "Hear—hear—hear." ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... inscrutable wisdom it has pleased God to remove from us the illustrious head of the nation, James A. Garfield, late President of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... the Sun, sons and daughters of those whose ancestors in the unremembered days received the divine command to create the empire over which they ruled with ever-growing glory until, by the inscrutable decrees of the Unnameable, the destroyer and oppressor were permitted to come into the land, listen with open ears and thankful hearts to the words which our Father shall put into my mouth ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... the Roman governors and their laws, for the Lord's sake. It was God's will and providence that the Romans should be masters of the world at that time. Jesus Christ the Lord, the King of kings, had so ordained it in his inscrutable wisdom; and they must submit to it, not for fear of the Romans, but for the Lord's sake as the servants of God, who believed that he was governing the world by his Son Jesus Christ, and that he knew best ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... of eligible week-enders of both sexes her wish was always gratified. And no one except Betty Gower ever knew that merely to sit looking out on the Gulf from that vantage point afforded her father some inscrutable satisfaction. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... and beautiful the young mother looked! Peerless, indeed, with her eyes full of an inscrutable graciousness she ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... these sodden pavements, for ever done, or did it go on up, to meet the kiss of the rising sun? And the sparrows, which fall to the ground, answered not. The sun rose calm and passionless, but dumb. The sky folded in, large but inscrutable. None the less arose the voice of lamentation and ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... to translate. Was it merely my imagination—I asked myself—or was there really a recurrent shade of her former hauteur of manner, mingled with just the faintest suggestion of irony and impatience? The fact is that I was at that moment as far from being able to comprehend this lovely but inscrutable woman as when I met her for the first time in the saloon of the City of Cawnpore: her moods were as changeable as the weather: there were occasions when her manner toward me was almost as warm and genial and sympathetic as even a ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... of luxury, of steam yachts, of country estates, of unlimited bank accounts, with a smile which showed her confidence in her beauty, her talents. The audience watched her, spellbound, as she stood on the sidewalk before the theater, looking with grave inscrutable eyes after the costly limousine that had just driven away without her. In no picture heretofore taken of the girl had she appeared to better advantage. Every line of her lovely face seemed responsive to the effect of the lighting, the situation, the motives which inspired her. The ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... we have that chastened and pathetic thought, which hangs like a burden on the Greek mind, a thought laden with sadness, but a sadness big with rich fruit of reflection; the thought of guilt unnatural, involuntary, imposed on the sufferer for some inscrutable reason by the mysterious dispensation of heaven. Helen, the queen of ancient song, is the offspring of this thought; Phaedra in another way is its offspring too. But as Virgil had degraded Helen, so Seneca degrades Phaedra. Her love for Hippolytus is the coarse sensual craving of a common-place ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... well enough to undergo some twenty or thirty hours' sea-sickness in the packet that offered the Saturday after my arrival,) I took a morbid and eager pleasure in awaiting the visits and observing the motions of those inscrutable beings. Sainsbury and his son were amused, but not surprised, at the anxiety I evinced to obtain a nearer insight into Maunsell's history. My curiosity and vigilance were, however, fruitless. The Pair performed their revolutions with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... eaten deeply into the heart of the Bakufu. In 1323, a question concerning right of succession to the Ando estate was carried to Kamakura for adjudication, and the chief judge, Nagasaki Takasuke, son of the old lay priest mentioned above, having taken bribes from both of the litigants, delivered an inscrutable opinion. Save for its sequel, this incident would merely have to be catalogued with many cognate injustices which disfigured the epoch. But the Ando family being one of the most powerful in northern Japan, its rival representatives appealed to arms in support ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... inscrutable glance in Zoie's direction. Was it possible that she was at last assisting him out of ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... out of the Clyde on Thursday night, and early on the Friday forenoon we took in our last batch of emigrants at Lough Foyle, in Ireland, and said farewell to Europe. The company was now complete, and began to draw together, by inscrutable magnetisms, upon the decks. There were Scots and Irish in plenty, a few English, a few Americans, a good handful of Scandinavians, a German or two, and one Russian; all now belonging for ten days to one small iron country on ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Juniper Bend, and the eyes were fixed, as it were, on a still more distant object—a dark, brooding, inscrutable look. ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... without subjecting the foot to a close scrutiny, at a later day when regrets will avail nothing, may deeply regret his neglect and inadvertence. As in human pathological experience, however, there are instances when inscrutable diseases will deliver their fatal messages, while leaving no mark and making no sign by which they might be identified and classified, so it will happen that in the humbler animals the onset and progress of mysterious and unrecognizable ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... Ritz-Carlton, became just a little restless. At half-past, his absorption in an evening paper, over the top of which he looked at every newcomer, was almost farcical. At five-and-twenty to nine Pamela arrived. He advanced down the lounge to meet her. Her face was inscrutable, her smile conventional. Yet she had come! He looked over his shoulder ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... William H. Lewis, the famous Harvard football coach, told Dr. Washington to go back South, and attend to his work of educating the Negro and 'leave to us the matters political affecting the race.' Every eye was upon Dr. Washington's face, but none of them could read anything in it; it was as inscrutable as a wooden Indian's. When every one of them had had his say, I called upon Dr. Washington to respond to the speakers who had unburdened themselves. Dr. Washington rose slowly, and with a slip of paper ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... sobriquet of "The Admirable." The chief scenes are laid in Paris at the time of Catherine de' Medici's rule and Henry III.'s reign, when the air was full of intrigue and conspiracy, and when religious quarrels were not more bitter and dangerous than political wrangles. The inscrutable king, the devout Queen Louise of Lorraine, the scheming queen-mother, and Marguerite of Valois, half saint, half profligate, a pearl of beauty and grace; Henry of Navarre, ready to buy his Paris with sword or mass; well-known great nobles, priests, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... she withdrew herself, her soul, her ego, so utterly that I felt myself gazing at an inscrutable stone image, as she ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... work—she was binding shoes—straightened herself as if her rocking-chair were a throne and she an empress, and looked at him with an inscrutable look of pride and suspicion. The truth was that she immediately conceived the idea that this great fair-haired Squire, with his loud, sweet voice, and his loud, frank laugh and pleasant blue eyes, ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... steal surely from all these, and on the morrow be a colorless ghost in the distant past. Its constancy will secure our immortality. The grandeur of the year may be the strength of our character; and as the East receives it, we may enter the inscrutable future reverently and with ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... feel for a moment that it was a woman who was doing that melancholy Dane, and that the woman was a Jewess, and the Jewess a French Jewess. These three removes put a gulf impassable between her utmost skill and the impassioned irresolution of that inscrutable Northern nature which is in nothing so masculine as its feminine reluctances and hesitations, or so little French as in those obscure emotions which the English poetry expressed with more than Gallic clearness, but which the French words always failed to convey. The battle was lost from the first, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... gasped the old gentleman, almost disbelieving the evidence of his own senses. "Good God! am I dreaming, or do I actually behold that awful badge of infamy branded upon the flesh of the husband of my child! Almighty heaven, thy judgments are inscrutable, but this ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... of us, Long Ghost began to be rated far above myself. For aught I knew, indeed, he might have privately thrown out a hint concerning the difference in our respective stations aboard the Julia; or else the planters must have considered him some illustrious individual, for certain inscrutable reasons, going incog. With this idea of him, his undisguised disinclination for work became venial; and entertaining such views of extending their business, they counted more upon his ultimate value to them as a man of science than ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... to talk to his travelling companion, but was somehow unable to find words. Panawe glanced at him with an inscrutable smile—stern, yet enchanting and half feminine. He then broke the silence, but, strangely enough, Maskull could not make out whether he was singing or speaking. From his lips issued a slow musical recitative, ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... dwelling, according to common belief, above the human circle; or, as others define her, she is a substantial protection, presiding over the particular destinies of individuals, and feigned by the ancient theologians to be the daughter of Justice, looking down from a certain inscrutable eternity upon all terrestrial ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... the fever again, bad," he comments to the little woman upon his own domain, whom he calls "Polly," or "Mrs. Sandford," as occasion dictates. She has been watching the preceding incident with inscrutable eyes. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... show me what can be done with ferns and mosses and lichens. The soil is marrowy and full of innumerable forests. Standing in these fragrant aisles, I feel the strength of the vegetable kingdom, and am awed by the deep and inscrutable processes of life going on so silently ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... be bigoted, my dear boy, when I say from the bottom of my heart that I respect every good Catholic and every good Protestant, and that I recognise that each of these forms of faith has been a powerful instrument in the hands of that inscrutable Providence which rules all things. Just as in the course of history one finds that the most far-reaching and admirable effects may proceed from a crime; so in religion, although a creed be founded upon an entirely inadequate conception of the Creator and His ways, it may none the ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... perplexing Irish problems; and to him Home Rule has come as a set, sober choice of possible policies for the interest of our Empire." Such an attitude—exalted by the even, though powerful, the cold, though penetrating voice—the face impassive and inscrutable—the eye, steady, unmoving, and unreadable—all this, I say, was just the kind of thing to produce an immense impression on those who are ready only to accept Home Rule as the ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... labors have in many ways deepened this Mystery. We can appeal confidently to any candid man to say, for instance, whether Darwin's theory of the origin of life and the evolution of species does not make this globe and its inhabitants a problem vastly darker and more inscrutable than the Mosaic account of the creation. Take, again, the light thrown on the constitution of the sun by the spectroscope; it is a marvellous addition to our knowledge of our environment, but then, does it not make our ignorance as to the origin of the sun seem deeper? No scientific man pretends ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... of growing power and prosperity. As she stands upright, full-statured and equal among the people of the earth, breathing the keen air and looking out upon the expanding horizon, she understands that her emancipation came because in the inscrutable wisdom of God her honest purpose was crossed and her brave ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... glance upon him, then, as he passed, in a vain attempt to read the sombre expression of his inscrutable face grown five years older in the last five days, I shuffled after the girl now flitting before me down Broome Street. As I did so, I noticed her dress to its minutest details, somewhat surprised to find how ragged and uncouth it was. That Mr. ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... Beaconsfield of Beaconsfield, Viscount Hughenden of Hughenden, sitting in his knightly stall, listening impassibly to the country parson's sermon. His head droops on his breast, but his coal-black inscrutable eyes are open. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... pointed to universal war. Only the United States preserved an inscrutable silence, which had been broken only by four words: "Hands off our commerce." And to these the Leagued Nations had listened, if rather by compulsion ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... the table. There was very little furniture in the room; there was a yellow-painted chest of drawers opposite the door, and this, too, held a little regiment of bottles; there was a large oleograph of Queen Victoria hanging above the bed, and a text—for some inscrutable reason—was permitted to hang above the fireplace, proclaiming that "The Lord is merciful and long-suffering," in Gothic letters, peeping modestly out of a wealth of painted apple-blossoms, with a water-wheel in the middle distance and a stile. On the further side ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... their orders for beer and lifted three dripping bottles from a tub of water at his feet. His eyes passed casually over Steele Weir's face, glanced away, then came back for a swift unblinking scrutiny. The eyes his own met were as hard, stony and inscrutable as his own. Finally Vorse, the saloon-keeper, turned his gaze towards the window and extracting a quill tooth-pick from a vest pocket began ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... time of my return. War will likely be begun; in that case we may bring a prize in with us. But our foresight is short—and mine particularly so. I hardly ever look forward to beyond three months. 'Tis in vain to be otherwise, for Providence, which directs all things, is inscrutable." And he concluded his letter thus,—"Now for Port Jackson. I shall sail to-night if the wind is fair. ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... should accept the peace; but it was voluntas beneplaciti, which, as we read in another place, Deut. vii. 2, decreed to deliver the Canaanites before the Israelites, that is, to harden their hearts to come against them in battle, and so to overrule the matter, by a secret and inscrutable providence, that the Israelites might lawfully and should certainly destroy them and show them no mercy. Even as that same God who, by one word, showed unto Abraham what was his duty, bidding him offer up his son Isaac, Gen. xxii. 2, by another ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... Mattioli were well known to European diplomatists and readers of books. Casal, moreover, at this time was openly ceded to Louis XIV., and Mattioli could not have told the world more than it already knew. But, for some inscrutable reason, the secret which Dauger knew, or was suspected of knowing, became more and more a source of anxiety to Louvois and Louis. What can he have known? The charges against his master, Roux de Marsilly, had been publicly proclaimed. Twelve years had passed since the dealings of Arlington with ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... never rejoiced more greatly over the one repentant sinner than the tired shepherdesses over their one poor ewe lamb, as she stood there with quivering hands and wet eyes, the first sense of conscious victory written on her inscrutable brow, and within the turbid, clouded brain the memory of a long struggle, and a hint, at least, of ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... my letter to his court. In a day or two I received a very touching and grateful answer, pathetic not only in its grief, but even more in his frankly avowed inability to derive any consolation from the thoughts that my short note had suggested. Resignation to the inscrutable will of God was the keynote of the letter. In some far-distant future he might be permitted once more to see his beloved son, but meanwhile all ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... terrier with a black eye. She shared Jay's burning desire to be of use, and, like most embryo reformers, she had a poor taste in dress. She wore her tail at an aimless angle, without chic; her markings were all lopsided. But her soul was ardent, and her life was always directed by some rather inscrutable theory or other. As a puppy she had been an inspired optimist, with legs like strips of elastic clumsily attached to a winged spirit. Later she had adopted a vigorous anarchist policy, and had inaugurated what was probably known in her set as the "Bite at Sight Campaign." Cured ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... Starr Wiley's heedless brutality, had been hunchbacked; the old crone in the shack by the zapote trees, his grandmother, looked as if many mysteries and legends might be hidden behind her fierce, inscrutable eyes. ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... moulded on the same inscrutable lines as the man whom she faced. Seldom, indeed, would either of these betray the feelings which agitated them. Then he took out the folded letter. It contained but ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... wonder of redder mornings, By the beauty of brighter seas, Did he stand, the world's first thinker, Scorning his clan's decrees?— Seeking, with baffled eyes, In the dumb, inscrutable skies, A name for the greater glory That only the ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... past Bout de l'lsle. Already the keel under foot was gathering way. From Bateese, who stood with eyes stiffened now and inscrutable, John looked down upon Diane. She lifted her face with a wan smile, but she, too, was listening to the challenge flung back from the ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a terrier, who managed in some inscrutable way to pick a quarrel with the moon, and on bright nights kept up such a ki-yi-ing in our back garden, that we were finally forced to dispose of him at private sale. He was purchased by Mr. Oxford, the butcher. I protested against the arrangement and ever afterwards, when we had sausages from ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... did not know the etiquette of His worship; that they thought of Him as having rights over them because they had come into His territory, which He would exact, or punish them for omitting. In a word, their notion of God was that of a jealous, capricious tyrant, whose ways were inscrutable to them, in whose territory they found themselves without their will, and who needed to be propitiated if they would ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the more abundant, or to decide whether to make such an inquiry be any thing else than to ask whether the world has been, on the whole, arranged to suit our tastes. The problem thus presented is utterly inscrutable on every hypothesis. Theology is as impotent in presence of it as science. Science, indeed, withdraws at once from such questions; whilst theology asks us to believe that this "sorry scheme of things" is the work of omnipotence ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... who had finished stropping his claws and was now enjoying a friction massage against his leg, and began to brood on the inscrutable way of Fate. ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... the Spaniards, first entered into possession they at once set to work to colonise and clear. Then the colonisation scheme went to the bad, the natives poisoned the wells, it is said, and the attention of the Spaniards was in those days turned, for some inscrutable reason, to the eastern shores of the island—a district now quite abandoned by whites, on account of its unhealthiness—and they lost in addition to the colonists a terrible quantity of their sailors, in Concepcion Bay. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... his chastising love. She left her fatherless flock in the family pew, and went with her nursling, not merely to give it to God, but to receive for it the seal of his covenant, bowing submissively to his inscrutable appointment, and imploring the God of Abraham to be still her God, and the God of this her seed. That scene had not failed to make deep impressions upon the other children; and now it was proposed to one ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... ways of heaven are altogether inscrutable, and soar as far above and beyond the works and the comprehensions of man as the sun, flaming in majesty, is above the tiny boy's evening rocket. It is the controller of Nature alone that can bring light out of darkness, and order out of confusion. Who ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... commenced to realize that the circumstantial evidence was strongly against him, and now, as the girl had warned him, his entirely innocent past was brought up against him simply because his existence had been called to the attention of a policeman, and the same policeman an inscrutable Fate had ordained should discover him alone with a ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... doubtless a devout Spaniard of those days would sing Te Deum for the comfortable exhibition of an auto de fe, in which those who differed from the dogmas of the holy Catholic church were burnt for the glory of GOD. The ways of Providence are inscrutable, and are best viewed by human ignorance in silent humility ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... her feet, as I to mine. Her eyes, alight with an inscrutable expression, looked into mine; her cheeks became diffused with the crimsoned glow of righteous indignation; her form was convulsed; she quivered from head to feet. For a moment this scene endured. Then ere my lips, but lately contracted for the chaste but unbidden salute, could frame the first stammered ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... to reconcile us to this "good from evil," by stopping inquiry with the "inscrutability of God's ways!" But we should not suffer ourselves to be deceived by such imaginary irreverence; for, in God's ways, there is nothing less inscrutable than his law of right. That law is never qualified in this world. It moves with the irresistible certainty of organized nature, and, while it makes man free, in order that his responsibility may be unquestionable, it leaves mercy, even, for the judgment hereafter. ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... the man came in; John Steele looked at it a moment, walked to a mirror and looked at himself. Long the deep eyes studied the firm resolute face; they seemed endeavoring to gaze beyond it; but the present visage, like a shadow, waved before him. The man's expression became inscrutable; stepping to the window, he gazed out on the Thames. A purplish glimmer lent enchantment to the noble stream; it may be as he looked upon it, his thoughts flowed with the river, past dilapidated structures, between whispering reeds on green banks, ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... gave another cut with his whip; which, with a whiz that discomposed the nerves of his horse, encircled with its supple thong the extended neck of the reptile, and terminated its existence by dislocation. He then effected another fulfilment of the prognosticated command of an inscrutable divinity, by crushing its head under his heel; when he was joined by his companion, who had been searching for a weapon to aid in the strife. The snake thus destroyed was of the brown species, and deadly venomous; it measured about six feet, and, if it had been trodden ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... both instinctively exchanged meaning glances, in a religious silence of the strictly entre nous variety however, towards where Skin-the-Goat, alias the keeper, not turning a hair, was drawing spurts of liquid from his boiler affair. His inscrutable face which was really a work of art, a perfect study in itself, beggaring description, conveyed the impression that he didn't understand one jot of what was going ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... appearance should be watched more closely than ever, the night patrols were doubled, and spies were employed daily in procuring intelligence of Abellino; and yet all was in vain. Abellino's retreat was inscrutable. ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... potential. He was certainly handsome, with that dark, aquiline, commanding beauty which women so generally recognise as dominant. With men he was distant and cold; but such a bearing never deters womankind. The inscrutable laws of sex have so arranged that even a timid woman is not afraid of a fierce and haughty man. And so it was that there was hardly a woman of any kind or degree, who lived within view of Brent's Rock, who did not cherish some form ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... rage. The sight of Lucille standing by Mr. Sabin's side, her hand lightly resting upon his, her dark eyes full of inscrutable tenderness, maddened him. He was flouted and ignored. He was carried away by a storm of passion. He tore a sheet of paper from his pocket book, and unlocking a small gold case at the end of his watch chain, shook from it a pencil ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... plays us so many apparently unnecessary tricks, and we are all of us such blind madmen, knowing not whither we are going from one day to another! I am told that it is no longer fashionable to believe in a devil—but I care nothing for fashion! A devil there is I am sure, who for some inscrutable reason has a share in the ruling of this planet—a devil who delights in mocking us from the cradle to the grave. And perhaps we are never so hopelessly, utterly fooled ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... was a Theosophist: all men were her brothers, and all women her sisters; but those especially among art-workers who fell by the wayside might share her bread and blanket. They called her Old Mother Sphinx, because of her inscrutable eyes, and ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... respectively, are as follows: (1) That the soul is specially created by the Supreme Power at the time of conception, or birth, and that its position on earth, its circumstances, its degree of intelligence, etc., are fixed arbitrarily by that power, for some inscrutable reason of its own; (2) That the soul was pre-existent, that is, that it existed before conception and birth, in some higher state not understood by us, from whence it was thrust into human form and birth, its position on earth, ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... bevy of pallid, whimpering maids. Cleopis was bearing Phoenix, but Hermione took him from her. Only his own mother should bear him now. They went through the thinning Agora and took one hard look at each familiar building and temple. When they should return to them, the inscrutable god kept hid. So to Peiraeus,—and to the rapid pinnaces which bore them across the narrow sea to Salamis, where for the moment ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... the car. From all points of the compass citizens began to assemble, many swallowing their chewing-gum in their excitement. One, a devout believer in the inscrutable ways of Providence, told a friend as he ran that only two minutes before he had almost robbed himself of this spectacle by going into ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... and a keen glance followed the last softly uttered word, but Treherne met it with an inscrutable smile and a quiet "Well, ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... face could display at will a Japanese liveliness of expression or become a mask of Indian gravity, surveyed the speaker with inscrutable eyes. ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... old man, Beulah, and have studied philosophic works for many years; but, take my word for it, the mass of them are sheer humbug. From the beginning of the world philosophers have been investigating the countless mysteries which present themselves to every earnest mind; but the arcana are as inscrutable now as ever. I do not wish to discourage you, Beulah; nor do I desire to underrate human capabilities; but, in all candor, this kind of study does not pay. It has not repaid me—it has not satisfied Hartwell, who went deeper into metaphysics than anyone I know, and who now has less belief ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... crews from the stout ship "Laughing Lass" in mid-Pacific, is a mystery weird and inscrutable. In the solution, there is a story of the most exciting voyage ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... because I know that if she disliked him she would not conceal the fact. She has, occasionally, much of her old uncle's bluntness about her, and will not say one thing and think another; unless, indeed, when she has a design in it, and then she is inscrutable." ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... cadence of doubt in the latter part of his speech which affected the professor's always alert curiosity, as did also the appearance of the "boy" reputed to belong to Dr. Farr. How old he was no one could have guessed. The yellow parchment of his face was ageless; ageless also the inscrutable, blank eyes. Only one thing was certain—he had never been young. For the rest, he was utterly composed and indifferent, and ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... the beauty of His own conception, which dwelt with Him alone from the beginning, Maia, or Nature's loveliness, at once the germ of passion and the source of worlds. Love became the universal parent, when the Deity, before remote and inscrutable, became ideally separated into the loving and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... satire or admonition as suited his own temper or the circumstances of the place for which he worked. Dante's poem has immortalised this moment of Italian consciousness, when the belief in another world was used to intensify the emotions of this life—when the inscrutable darkness toward which men travel became for them a black and polished mirror reflecting with terrible luminousness the events of the present and the past. So familiar had the Italians become with the theme of death artistically ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... down at her, and she had the feeling that behind the inscrutable mask of his countenance ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... that the eyes of the two women were on her, searching her, and that Sophy's eyes were not altogether kind. She continued in her impassivity, smiling a provoking and inscrutable smile. ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... Kant's education and character can make intelligible to us the restraint he exercised in making supernatural postulates. All he asserted was his inscrutable moral imperative and a God to reward with the pleasures of the next world those who had been Puritans in this. But the same principle could obviously be applied to other cherished imaginations: there is no ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... loves He chastens sorely, but I ask not why. I only know that God is just and good: All else is mystery. Why evil lives Within His universe, I may not know. I know it lives, and taints the vital air; And that in ways inscrutable to me— Yet compromising not His soundless love And boundless power—it ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... thought that heaven worked out its designs by means often inscrutable to human comprehension: and he blamed himself for having doubted the truth of the vision. Feelings of joy therefore accompanied the reassurance of his soul; and, having poured forth his thanksgivings for the merciful intervention of Providence in his ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... for four months. But that didn't console me in the least. I hated the man. Will you stop smiling in that inscrutable way and tell me ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... upon those prior obligations. In some cases the subordinate relations are voluntary, in others they are necessary,—but the duties are all compulsive. When we marry, the choice is voluntary, but the duties are not matter of choice: they are dictated by the nature of the situation. Dark and inscrutable are the ways by which we come into the world. The instincts which give rise to this mysterious process of Nature are not of our making. But out of physical causes, unknown to us, perhaps unknowable, arise moral duties, which, as we are able perfectly to comprehend, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... than the height of a man. A clear area of a few yards surrounded the pi-pi, and was enclosed by four trunks of cocoanut trees resting at the angles on massive blocks of stone. The place was sacred. The sign of the inscrutable Taboo was seen in the shape of a mystic roll of white tappa, suspended by a twisted cord of the same material from the top of a slight pole planted within the enclosure*. The sanctity of the spot appeared never to have been violated. The stillness of the grave was there, and the calm solitude ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... stared at him. The broad swarthy face loomed like a menace in the uncertain light before us. It was dark; it was inscrutable; a heavy resolution was marked in that thick neck, low brow, and salient chin. We ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... under this heavy overcast sky of the commencing plebeianism, by which everything is rendered opaque and leaden?—It is not his actions which establish his claim—actions are always ambiguous, always inscrutable; neither is it his "works." One finds nowadays among artists and scholars plenty of those who betray by their works that a profound longing for nobleness impels them; but this very NEED of nobleness is radically different from the needs of the noble soul itself, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... instruments of death; Europe is bristling with five millions of bayonets: and this is the condition of a world for which the Son of God died eighteen hundred and sixty-two years ago! There is no mystery of Providence so inscrutable as this; and yet, is not the very sense of its mournfulness a proof that the spirit of Christianity is living in the minds of men? For, of a verity, military glory is becoming in our best thoughts a bloody rag, and conquest the first in the catalogue of ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... hill, Bleak, round, and high, by flame-lit height made higher, With nothing on it for the flame to kill Save one who moved and was alone up there To loom before the chaos and the glare As if he were the last god going home Unto his last desire. Dark, marvelous, and inscrutable he moved on Till down the fiery distance he was gone,— Like one of those eternal, remote things That range across a man's imaginings When a sure music fills him and he knows What he may say thereafter to few men,— The touch of ages having wrought An ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... designs are inscrutable, did not see fit to enlighten his servant, Paphnutius, lost in doubt, resolved not to think of Thais any more. But his resolutions were vain. Though absent, she was ever with him. She gazed at him whilst he read, or meditated, or prayed, or met his eyes wherever he ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... It may make the dead man 'happy,' just as your mother knows that you are happy. But none the less it is a transformation, and sad sometimes for those left behind. A mother whose child is dying can hardly believe that in the inscrutable Unknown there is anyone who can look to it as well as she. And if a mother cannot trust her child easily to God Almighty, shall I be so mean as to be angry because she cannot trust it easily to me? I tell you I have stood before ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... work for the preservation of my life—a force which with the giant tread of the earthquake devastates countries and lays cities in ruins; that awful power which on wings of the cyclone slays the innocent babe in its cradle and harms not the villain, or vice versa; that inscrutable spirit which creates and lovingly shelters the sparrow over night and then at dawn hands it to the owl to serve him for his breakfast. Safe I was under the guidance of the same loving, paternal Providence which in death delivereth the innocent babe from evil and temptation, shields the little sparrow ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... could, we could find no traces of the join of the sliding door; nor, indeed, could we hit upon the secret, now utterly lost, that worked it, though we tried for an hour or more. It is certainly a marvellous bit of mechanism, characteristic, in its massive and yet inscrutable simplicity, of the age which produced it; and I doubt if the world has such ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... inscrutable face. "Suppose I should tell you that my income, each week, is about equal to what we expect to get from ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... Tom! Who, that had beheld thee, for three summer weeks, poring through half the deadlong night over the jingling anatomy of that inscrutable old harpsichord in the back parlour, could have missed the entrance to thy secret heart: albeit it was dimly known to thee? Who that had seen the glow upon thy cheek when leaning down to listen, after hours of labour, for the sound of one incorrigible note, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... are which seem inscrutable. There was some strange preliminary process by which the main races of men were formed; they began to exist very early, and except by intermixture no new ones have been formed since. It was a process singularly active in early ages, and singularly quiescent in later ages. Such differences ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... thrilling. I can imagine no science of greater importance, no investigation more worthy of devotion. The profundity of the problems is but an incitement. We have not hesitated to tabulate the stars, to weave precious conjectures as to their courses and destinies. Is the human soul more remote and inscrutable? We are assured that it has five windows and no more, that it is useless to look for others. But when an increasing number of explorers in the house of life tell us that there are six or seven or more, we may at any rate listen and follow their directions. Obscurantism ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... is imperative that the walls of the Abbaye should appear inscrutable, of great thickness, and yet subtilized by the mists of coming ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... profit, it would undoubtedly have its weight, and would require to be patiently considered. Life is too serious, however, to be wasted with impunity over speculations in which certainty is impossible, and in which we are trifling with what is inscrutable. ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... this, for I had entertained hopes that all when brought under Christian instruction would have accepted the truth; but God's ways are inscrutable—we only know that they are ...
— Mary Liddiard - The Missionary's Daughter • W.H.G. Kingston
... and Venator styles them 'patient men,' as surely they have great need to be. For our toil, like that of the husbandman, hangs on the weather that Heaven sends, and on the flies that have their birth or being from a kind of dew, and on the inscrutable caprice of fish; also, in England, on the miller, who giveth or withholdeth at his pleasure the very water that is our element. The inquiring rustic who shambles up erect when we are lying low among the reeds, even he disposes of our ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... God. For the latter, salvation is assured by His Almighty and grace-conferring Will. The fact that in other sinners no such conversion to God and to a redeeming faith in His Word is effected, can only be ascribed to the inscrutable Will of God Himself, nor durst man dispute thereon with his Maker. Luther in this went further than did afterwards the Evangelical Church that bears his name. And even he, later on, abstained himself and warned others to abstain from discussing ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... her whole body slightly sidewise, the better to face him. The soft silk fell in new lines about her, defining new curves. Her red lips smiled softly, and her eyes were dark and inscrutable. ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... worship on that small face, and at the same time to behold the grotesqueness toward which it was directed. Bella was listening with her lowered eyes and tightened lips. She was interested in spite of herself; and Pete's inscrutable face ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... just reached the point where he took that one peep through the little knothole, and saw Mr. Graylock buttoning up his coat, with that inscrutable look on his thin face, when he arrived home, and ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... for the Lofoten Islands, where the great annual fair was about to be held. In the saloon my companions from Trondhjem were two young Frenchmen, bent, like myself, upon visiting the North Cape, and an Austrian, attached to the Court at Vienna, who, for some inscrutable reason, was fired with the same ambition. We made a very cheery company, and I was able to cast off all editorial cares in the society of these people, to whom English politics were of no account. ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... exclusively, practically robbed him before his very birth of the nurture and protection of a father. His reputed father had no obligation to be even aware of his procreation, and nevertheless [246] —so inscrutable are the ways of Providence!—the Mulatto was the centre around which clustered the outraged instincts of nature in rebellion against the desecrating mandates that prescribed treason to herself. Law and society may decree; but in our normal humanity there throbs a sentiment which neutralizes every ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... rending asunder of the veil that divides what is called "super-liminal" from "subliminal" consciousness; to find in prophecy and secret insight the effect of a flash of unconscious inference from a mass of data buried in the inscrutable darkness of our forgotten self. Together with this, there is also a levelling-up philosophy, a sort of modernized ontologism, which would attribute all natural intuition to a more immediate self-revelation on God's part than seems quite ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... caused by a personal altercation between two Women in the crowd, and shouts of "Order!") Because really my doctor has ordered me not to speak in the open air at all ... (Here an ill-conditioned female, taking offence for some inscrutable reason, remarks loudly, "'Er doctor, indeed, she's a beauty, she is—'er and 'er doctor!" More calls to order, and extreme indignation of the ill-conditioned female at being informed that she is "no lady," and had "better 'old 'er jaw"; ribald and utterly meaningless jests by the larrikins.) ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... and instead of returning, as he might have done, to the court, retreated into the most obscure corners of the metropolis; and again changing his name and dress, gave himself out as a German doctor named Bendo, who professed to find out inscrutable secrets, and to apply infallible remedies; to know, by astrology, all the past, and to foretell ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... nation is duly arrayed and led to victory. We must be patient, as our fathers were patient; even in our worst calamities, we must remember that defeat itself may be a gain where it costs our enemy more in relation to his strength than it costs ourselves. But if, in the inscrutable providence of the Almighty, this generation is disappointed in its lofty aspirations for the race, if we have not virtue enough to ennoble our whole people, and make it a nation of sovereigns, we shall at least hold in undying ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... immovably fixed on the venerable Felix,—"that I should be compelled to send for you so soon again on the same matters which, since your arrival in Rome, have caused me so much anxiety. This miracle,—of which you are declared to be the worker,—though for some inscrutable reason, you persist in denying your own act,—is not yet properly authenticated. And, to make the case worse, it seems that the unfortunate man, Claude Cazeau, whom we entrusted with our instructions to the Archbishop of Rouen, has suddenly disappeared, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... eyes dropped before that glance. There was an inscrutable look upon her face, but it was a look that would have told another woman that Mrs. Romaine was disappointed by the news which she had just heard. Caspar Brooke, ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Donald Roy leaped forward just in time, and next moment Hamish Gorm lay stretched on the turf, muttering Gaelic oaths and tearing at the sod with his dirk in an impotent rage. Sir Robert looked down at the prostrate man with his inscrutable smile. ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... process and an inscrutable. No one has ever given us a continuous history of any particular poem, tracing its history and adventures after its first publication—the places it has been quoted, the hearts it has rejoiced. It could only be done by an infinity of toil and ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... whatever, not to talk of appearances and decorum, and I might say, anything like a high line of duty or moral conduct,—shocked me very much. It did, indeed, my dear. Taking it altogether, I don't know that I was ever more shocked in my life. The thing was so inscrutable!" Here Lady Midlothian held up one hand in a manner that was truly imposing; "so inscrutable! But that is all over now. What was personally offensive to myself I could easily forgive, and I do forgive ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... sentiment of affectionate reproach in the demeanour of her daughter when she bade her farewell. Whatever might be the consciousness of the mother, she was successful in concealing her impression. Very kind, but calm and inscrutable, Lady Annabel, having given directions for postponing the dinner-hour, embraced her child and ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... paused. Still those luminous eyes were upon her. She grew nervous. It was only with tremendous difficulty that she reached the refrain. As she sang the opening lines of the last stanza, an inscrutable smile curled on Clarke's lips. She noticed the man's relentless gaze and faltered. When the burden came, her singing was hard and cracked: the tremour had gone from ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... of which he felt the need. He was greatly tempted to go away at once to diminish his sufferings, but conquered this weakness. The next evening he passed at the chateau of M. des Rameures; and though his heart was bleeding, he piqued himself on presenting an unclouded brow and an inscrutable smile to Madame de Tecle. He announced the brief absence he ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... I stubbornly denied, and, at every step in the progress of our discussions, found arguments for my opinion. For as in poetry a certain faith in the impossible, and as in religion a like faith in the inscrutable, must have a place, the philosophers appeared to me to be in a very false position who would demonstrate and explain both of them from their own field of vision. Besides, it was very quickly proved, from the history of philosophy, that one ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... unseen thing; but the grown ripened grain is visible. It is the inner power that is hid; the fruit may be seen by all. There is indeed an invisible Christ, who is already within his people the resurrection and the life; but there is no invisible Christianity. How grace in the heart grows is an inscrutable mystery; when it is grown, it is known and read of all men. Your life, as to its source and supply, is hid with Christ in God: but your life, as to its practical effects, is a city set on a hill. There is a great difference between the light that ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... with her, has done more to make her in love with him than the handsomest man, if he can produce there is a silence in it that suspends the foot; and the folded arms and the dejected head are the images it reflects." "Love is but another name for that inscrutable presence by which the soul is connected with humanity," says Simms. "The beings who appear cold," says Madame Swetchine, "adore where they dare to love." "Man, while he loves, is never quite depraved," says Charles Lamb. "It ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... however, was inscrutable; it was as though it were hewn out of stone, and he could learn nothing from it. But what was that? It seemed to Mikolai as though his friend's pale face had suddenly flushed. Then he turned his head ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... his way through the soft gloom past the Courthouse to the Methodist Church. The double doors were open, and a flood of hot radiance rolled out into the night, together with the familiar tones of old Martin Seeker loudly importuning his invisible, inscrutable Maker. There were no houses opposite the church, and, balanced obscurely on the fence of split rails against the unrelieved night, a row of young men smoked redly glowing cigarettes; while, on the ground below them, shone the lanterns by the aid ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer |
