"Unfathomable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shook hands. He had a few pleasant, lingering words to say. She paused as he spoke at the other side of that little garden door. She seemed to like those lingering sentences—and hung upon them—and even smiled but in her eyes there was a vague and melancholy pleading—a wandering and unfathomable look that pained him. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Drill-manual for Fritz, at least the Catechism he had plied Wilhelmina with, which no doubt was the same, is still extant. [Preuss, i. 15;—specimens of it in Rodenbeck.] A very abstruse Piece; orthodox Lutheran-Calvinist, all proved from Scripture; giving what account it can of this unfathomable Universe, to the young mind. To modern Prussians it by no means shines as the indubitablest Theory of the Universe. Indignant modern Prussians produce excerpts from it, of an abstruse nature; and ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... garmented in light From her own beauty: deep her eyes as are Two openings of unfathomable night Seen through a temple's cloven roof; her hair Dark; the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight, Picturing her form. Her soft smiles shone afar; And her low voice was heard like love, and drew All living things towards this wonder new. ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... been termed a space battle by a navy or an army. But the cops operated within a strictly police frame of reference, which was the reverse of military. They weren't trying to subjugate the Huks, but to make them behave. In consequence, their tactics were unfathomable to the Huks—who thought in military terms. Squadrons of police ships which would have seemed ridiculous to a fighting-force commander threw the Huks off-balance, kept them off-balance, did a scrupulous minimum of damage to them, and ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... hill and dale. The commotion of the day and the driving lulled the old woman into deep sleep, and Uli, with tense muscles, held in the wildly racing Blackie to a moderately fast pace; Freneli was alone in the wide world. As far off in the distant sky the stars floated in the limitless space of the unfathomable blue ocean, each by itself in its solitary course, so she felt herself again to be the poor, solitary, forsaken girl in the great turmoil of the universe. When she had left aunt and uncle, when they were dead, she would have no one left on earth; no house for a refuge in time of sickness; ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... morning some six months later Don Courtier walked briskly out of St. Pancras station, valise in hand, and surveyed a misty yellow London with friendly eyes. A taxi-driver, hitherto plunged in unfathomable gloom, met this genial glance and recovered courage. He volunteered almost cheerfully to drive Don to any spot which he might desire to visit, an offer which Don accepted in an ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... loved Gladys Todd, and I did not have to stamp the floor to prove it. I was sure that I had lost her, and it was the sense of my loss that made my love well up from unfathomable depths to overwhelm me. I was angry. My pride was hurt. I counted over the years of my untiring devotion to her, and they seemed to sum up the best years of my life. That the telegram foreran a more explicit statement there could be no doubt. After all she had written ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... Possibly no one could except the Dream Woman, and her he never saw again; so the mystery was unfathomable. He put the rose between the leaves of the Bible his mother had given him when he went to college, and which he had not opened since until that morning; and the rose became dry and faded as the years passed, quite as any ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... corner, a barber would be bending over a half-shaven skull. Everywhere children of every shade from yellow to deep umber would be playing solemnly about the ways, turning upon the passing stranger their grave, unfathomable eyes. ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... word, absolves him from nature's guardianship, so the necessity, which alongside of her he must recognize, is no mere natural necessity, but one lying beyond the world of sense in the abyss of infinitude; consequently it exhibits itself as the unfathomable power of Destiny. Hence this power extends also to the world of gods: for the Grecian gods are mere powers of nature; and although immeasurably higher than mortal man, yet, compared with infinitude, they are on an equal footing with ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... and none could open the secret lock of the young man's wisdom. But a friend of Feng, gifted more with assurance than judgment, declared that the unfathomable cunning of such a mind could not be detected by any vulgar plot, for the man's obstinacy was so great that it ought not to be assailed with any mild measures; there were many sides to his wiliness, and it ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... toilet, of her jewels, of her house and of her equipages, was of regal magnificence. She blended the taste of an artist with that of a patrician. Her person appeared really to be made divine by the rays of this splendor. Large, blonde, graceful, the eyes blue and unfathomable, the forehead grave, the mouth pure and proud it was impossible to see her enter a salon with her light, gliding step, or to see her reclining in her carriage, her hands folded serenely, without dreaming of the young immortals ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... through the crevices between the shingles, and the cracks in the walls, and behold the stars gleaming from the unfathomable spaces. He wondered how far they were away. He listened to the wind chanting a solemn dirge, filling his soul with longings for he knew not what. He thought over his grandfather's stories, and the words he had spoken about courage, truth, and ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... any hereabouts object, I will not be so cruel or unreasonable as to hope they will admit it. At first, full of soft light, gentle and alluring, they brighten up to blaze upon you lustrously, and fascinate the gazer's dazzled glance: there are depths in them that tell of the unfathomable soul, heights in them that speak of the spirit's aspirations. It is gentleness and purity, no less than sensibility and passion, that look forth in such strange power from those windows of the mind: it is not the mere beautiful machine, fair form, and pleasing colours, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... impossible for me to accept a truth with that amount of evidence which satisfied her mind, and I doubted, at times, a future existence. But I do not doubt it now. I have had proof,—abundant proof; and, O, the joy that fills my soul is unfathomable. ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... to hold my pen and go on writing, as I remember the infinite follies of modern thought in this matter, centered in the notion that liberty is good for a man, irrespectively of the use he is likely to make of it. Folly unfathomable! unspeakable! You will send your child, will you, into a room where the table is loaded with sweet wine and fruit— some poisoned, some not?—you will say to him, "Choose freely, my little child! It is so good ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... heights and depths, and that, in fact, there remains for him, the aftercomer, nothing more to do. And how could one get courage only to put pen to paper, if one were conscious in an earnest, appreciating spirit, that such unfathomable and unattainable excellences were ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... grace too, in dance and talk, than the phlegmatic affectation of modern days allows; and there were some bright eyes that, not seeming to look, yet recognised, with a little thrill at the heart, and a brighter flush, the brilliant, proud Devereux—so handsome, so impulsive, so unfathomable—with his gipsy tint, and great enthusiastic eyes, and strange melancholy, sub-acid smile. But to him the room was lifeless, and the hour was dull, and the music but a ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... dark and deep with unfathomable courage. Yet he was going back in the morning. He was going back. All he had courage for was to go back. He would go back, though he died by inches. Why not? It was killing him, it was like living loaded with irons. But he had the ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... poets of Arithmetic are they Who, though they prove not two and two to be Five, as they might do in a modest way, Have plainly made it out that four are three, Judging by what they take, and what they pay: The Sinking Fund's unfathomable sea, That most unliquidating liquid, leaves The debt unsunk, yet ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... imperishable Beauty, of which things on earth are only dim copies.... I have seen the future, the destinies of the human race; I have spoken to the mighty, the lofty, and the pure; I have learnt the wise Order which guides the apparent great disorder; I trembled at the unfathomable secret of the Universe of which I had a glimmering perception, and I felt the immensity of my ignorance. Plato, you shall write what I have seen. You shall teach the children of men to estimate things at their proper ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... She turned upon him that dazzling smile of which she had learned the secret from the Contessa, which was unfathomable to the observer but quite simple to the simple-minded; and then she said: "Do you amuse yourself very much in the evening? I used to hear the voices and think how pleasant it would ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... Manbo history is for the most part veiled in the obscurity of traditional accounts of the past. Now and then it is brightened by the transient light of a missionary's pen only to relapse into the unfathomable darkness of the past. The few traditions that come down to us in Manbo legendary song and oral tradition furnish but little light in the darkness, arid that little is probably not the pure and simple light of truth, but the multicolored rays of the popular imagination that ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... was wide like a great floor shut in by a low, vast dome of curving blue set with the largest, most wonderful stars she had ever seen. Heavy shadows of purple-green, smoke-like, hovered over earth darker and more intense than the unfathomable blue of the night sky. It seemed like the secret nesting-place of mysteries wherein no human foot might dare intrude. It was incredible that such could be but common sage-brush, sand, and greasewood wrapped about with the beauty of ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... about the disaster, or that the eating of some unknown venomous species of fish, or other marine animal, or oceanic bird, might have induced it—but it is utterly useless to form conjectures where all is involved, and will, no doubt, remain for ever involved, in the most appalling and unfathomable mystery. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the other, in tones of withering and unfathomable contempt, "my milk! Do you think I'd look at the beastly stuff when I'm out of sight of the bloody anarchists? We're all Christians in this room, though perhaps," he added, glancing around at the reeling crowd, "not strict ones. Finish my milk? Great blazes! yes, I'll finish it right enough!" ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... bracing himself to endure inevitable detection. So crude and piercing indeed was this mask confronting her that Domini started and was inclined to shudder. For a minute the man's eyes held hers, and she thought she saw in them unfathomable depths of misery or of wickedness. She hardly knew which. Sorrow was like crime, and crime like the sheer desolation of grief to her just then. And she thought of the outer darkness spoken of in the Bible. It came before her in the sunset. Her father was in it, and this stranger stood by him. ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... Look out there into that sad Europe, and see it all! See, there, how the Catholic element everywhere marks itself with night, and drags the soul, and energies, and freedom of the people backwards and downwards into political and social inaction—into unfathomable quagmires ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... with Abraham, when earth was young, four thousand years ago, is still moving on as a distinct stream flowing amidst the waters of the great ocean, yet never mingling with them, though nearing the unfathomable gulf ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... richness of experience which is offered to him, man will and should find himself, as it were, flung to and fro between action and contemplation. Between the call to transcendence, to a simple self-loss in the unfathomable and adorable life of God, and the call to a full, rich and various actualization of personal life, in the energetic strivings of a fellow worker with Him: between the soul's profound sense of transcendent love, and its felt possession of and duty towards immanent love—a ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... the remembrance that "thymos"—mind—meant originally blast. "The fathers of Greek theology gave to that Supreme Intelligence, which they instinctively recognized as above and ruling over the universe, the name of Zeus; but in doing so, they knew well that by Zeus they meant more than the sky. The unfathomable depth, the everlasting calm of the ethereal sky was to their minds an image of that Infinite Presence which overshadows all, and looks down on all. As the question perpetually recurred to their minds, 'Where is he who abideth ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... her, deeply worried, and she stood for a moment with a hand pressed over her eyes, swaying. He had never seen her like this; he was like a pilot striving to steer his ship through an unfathomable fog. Following what had become an instinct with him, he raised his left hand and touched the cross beneath his throat. And inspiration ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... the safety of the whole ship's company depends on him, and there is the fine tradition, which British captains always live up to, that in case of any accident happening to the ship the captain must be the last man to quit her. Innumerable captains indeed have preferred to go down into the unfathomable depths with their ships sooner than leave them when they have ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... man whom strife sets off, a middling good man in his way, perhaps, with a call to the sword whose justice he has never questioned. I have studied the philosophies; I have reflected on life—this unfathomable problem—and 'fore God I begin to doubt my very right to wear a breastplate against the poignard of fate. Dubiety plays on me ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... only a small part of a very large circle made up of his family—in most cases dependent on him for support—and of his friends, even the most vivid imagination fails to give proper expression in words of the sum total of unfathomable misery, broken hearts, spoiled lives, and destroyed hopes that are represented in these ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... a ledge beneath which the sheer cliff dropped away into unfathomable snowy depths. After short excursions to right and left I discovered that a section of the cliff had split off and dropped into the canyon, leaving only sheer rock walls that offered nothing in the way of footholds. Irresolutely, I faced back the ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... dismembered, imperfect, next to monstrous. For his body is called his fulness, yea, the fulness of him that fills all in all. This has naturally a respect for those for whom he ever liveth to make intercession; yea, an unfathomable respect for them, because they are ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... in the ancient times the old bishop's palace, where Beldenak lived!" said Sophie. "Just opposite to the river is the bell-well, where a bell flew out of St. Albani's tower. The well is unfathomable. Whenever rich people in Odense die, it rings ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... of forest, which ceased at its crest. This slope stretched downwards for half a mile or more to the lip of a beautiful lake, of which the area was perhaps two hundred acres. Set in the centre of the deep blue water of this lake, which we discovered afterwards to be unfathomable, was an island not more than five and twenty or thirty acres in extent, that seemed to be cultivated, for on it we could see fields, palms and other fruit-bearing trees. In the middle of the island stood a small, near house thatched after the fashion of the country, but civilized in its ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... a wide plain. On one side, it was bounded by thick woods, whose dark secret depths looked unfathomable to the eye: on the other, by hills, ever rising higher and higher yet, until they were lost in bright, beautifully white clouds, gleaming in refulgent sunlight. On the side above the woods, the sky was dark and vaporous. It seemed as if some thick exhalation had arisen from beneath the trees, and ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain which ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... beans, his jaws working, he had chanced to glance at the lead-dog, lying half a dozen feet away. That gray and frosty wolf was gazing at him with the infinite wistfulness and yearning that glimmers and hazes so often in the eyes of Northland dogs. Smoke knew it well, but never got over the unfathomable wonder of it. As if to shake off the hypnotism, he set down his plate and coffee-cup, went to the sled, and ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... the three fingers of his left hand into his mouth and refused to say a word. His eyes widened with an unfathomable baby-emotion. ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... faint scream, Out of life's unfathomable dawn, Far off, so far, like a madness, under the horizon's dawning rim, ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence
... impression that capital was what you put into a bank, and interest was what you took out; while the difference between the par value of a security and the price you could get for it on the market, would have been to him a hopelessly unfathomable mystery. Aunt Charlotte, therefore, was very wise in abstaining from any reference, in conversation, to the great enterprise for extracting gold from sea-water, in which she hoped to purchase shares; for one could never have told what foolish remark he might have made, ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... and pitiful, tragically meager to house the tangled human destinies it was housing. And the fields where we'd labored and sweated took on a foreign and ghostly coloring, as though they were oblongs on the face of an alien world, a world with mystery and beauty and unfathomable pathos ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... of all he most admires in Eleanor, the sweet domesticated country maiden, pure as the health-laden breezes sighing through the trees. His love ennobles his being, he is surprised at this inexplicable and unfathomable passion. ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... in unfathomable mines Of never-failing skill, He treasures up his bright designs And works ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... sorrow. It is an unhappy love-affair. I understand." Here he smiled his critical, unfathomable, remote smile. "You are not yet eighteen, and have been capable of a great sorrow! Child," he said, "thank God for it! You have a voice of gold. We will make of that sorrow diamonds and rubies and pearls to set in the voice, so that the world will stand at gaze before you. ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... been injected into the rock, or deposited in masses under the crust of the earth. In some cases the quarried ore yields from 50 to 70, and even as much as 90 per cent of iron. The Dannemora Mine is a vast quarry open to the sky. When you come near it the place looks like a vast deep pit, with an unfathomable bottom. Ghostlike, weird-looking pinnacles of rocks stand out from its profound depths; but beyond these you see nothing but wreaths of smoke curling up from below. The tortuous chasm in the earth, caused by the quarries beneath, is about ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... her full face as she looked up with her unfathomable eyes and tremulous red mouth. At the first glance he noticed a change in her—an awakening he would have called it—and for a minute he lost himself in a vague surmise as to the cause. Then all ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... entered the breakfast-room, the one generally used in winter for all purposes. Mrs. Rossitur sat there alone in an easy-chair; and Fleda no sooner caught the outline of her figure than her heart sank at once to an unknown depth unknown before and unfathomable now. She was cowering over the fire her head sunk in her hands, so crouching, that the line of neck and shoulders instantly conveyed to Fleda the idea of fancied or felt degradation there was no escaping it how, whence, what, ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... solemn fact that the English in this Eastern exile have contrived to make a small golf links out of the green scrub and sand; with a comfortable clubhouse at one end of it and this primeval monument at the other. They did not actually use this archaic abyss as a bunker, because it was by tradition unfathomable, and even for practical purposes unfathomed. Any sporting projectile sent into it might be counted most literally as a lost ball. But they often sauntered round it in their interludes of talking and smoking cigarettes, and ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... dwellers there had no power against it, in its moments of insensate rage, and the land no protection from its encroachments except in the simple device of the willow hedges, which, if planted, sometimes refused to grow, but often came of themselves and kept the torrent from the loose, unfathomable soil of the banks, otherwise ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and life, which I hold with him—No! I have a Victor—true; but no superior.[123] Homage he has from all—but none from me: 430 I battle it against him, as I battled In highest Heaven—through all Eternity, And the unfathomable gulfs of Hades, And the interminable realms of space, And the infinity of endless ages, All, all, will I dispute! And world by world, And star by star, and universe by universe, Shall tremble in the balance, till the great Conflict shall cease, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... sat with drooped head, unable to speak. Daddy John looked into the fire. To them both the Angel of Death seemed to have paused outside the door, and in the stillness they waited for his knock. Only Courant was indifferent, staring at the wall with eyes full of an unfathomable unconcern. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... in those eyes, listen to that dear voice, notice the feeling of even a single touch that is bestowed upon you by that gentle hand! Make much of it while yet you have that most precious of all good gifts, a loving mother. Read the unfathomable love of those eyes; the kind anxiety of that tone and look, however slight your pain. In after life you may have friends, fond, dear friends, but never will you have again the inexpressible love and gentleness lavished upon you which none but ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... fantastically set 200 With cupola or minaret, Wild crests as pagod ever decked, Or mosque of Eastern architect. Nor were these earth-born castles bare, Nor lacked they many a banner fair; 205 For, from their shivered brows displayed, Far o'er the unfathomable glade, All twinkling with the dewdrops sheen, The brier-rose fell in streamers green, And creeping shrubs, of thousand dyes, 210 Waved in ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... matter is, indeed, as deep (in importance) as an unfathomable pit. How will the pertinacity of this Reciter end? If I do not accept what has been given by this Brahmana, how shall I avoid being stained with a great sin?' The royal sage then said unto the two disputants, 'Go ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Dr. Eliot's daughter Mary, who while skating over one of the so-called "sink-holes," then existing about the city, broke the ice, fell in, and the body was never recovered. These sink holes were generally supposed to be unfathomable. ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... clearly understand the significance of the term, which is applied to a remarkable plateau at the western extremity of the archipelago, occupying a space between two and three hundred miles long, and about one third as wide. These banks, as they are called, rise almost perpendicularly from an unfathomable depth of water, and are of coral formation. In sailing over them the bottom is distinctly seen from the ship's deck, the depth of water being almost uniformly forty to fifty feet. Some years since, when the author was crossing these banks in a sailing ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... a slight, graceful figure, tapering down at the waist like a top, which had set off a silk coat to perfection and soured the beaus with envy. His movements, however, had all the decision of a man of action and of force. But his eye it was took possession of me—an unfathomable, dark eye, which bore more toward melancholy than sternness, and yet had something of both. He wore a clean, ruffled shirt, an exceeding neat coat and breeches of blue broadcloth, with plate burnished buttons, and white cotton stockings. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... mechanical effluence from things unseen to things unseeing,—from Stars, that did not shine, to Earth, that did not perceive,—the change, I say, of that blind vibration into the glory of the Sun and Moon for human eyes: so making possible the communication out of the unfathomable truth of that portion of truth which is good for us, and animating to us, and is set to rule over the day and over the night of ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... glances at the pale green, star-spangled sky on which there is no cloudlet, no spot, and understands why the warm air is motionless, why nature is on her guard, afraid to stir: she is afraid and reluctant to lose one instant of life. Of the unfathomable depth and infinity of the sky one can only form a conception at sea and on the steppe by night when the moon is shining. It is terribly lonely and caressing; it looks down languid and alluring, and its ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... fissures, the stream, one-fourth of a mile from its debouchure, breaks into a continuous cascade of remarkable beauty, consisting of a fall of five feet, succeeded by another of fifteen into a grotto formed by proximate rocks imperfectly arching it, whence from a crystal pool of unfathomable depth at their base, it lingers as if half reluctant to continue its course, or as if to renew its power, and then glides gracefully over a descending, almost perpendicular, ledge, veiling the rocks for the distance ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... old man's eyes, and seemed to see there an unfathomable sadness, such as he had never seen; but at the touch a pain so fierce and agonising passed through him, that he sank upon the ground and covered his ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and whisky, which they offered to us at almost every moment. The greatest curiosity upon this mountain is a little lake, near the summit, called, "The Devil's Punch-Bowl." It is surrounded by almost perpendicular rocks; the water is very dark, and is said to be unfathomable. Though so completely shut in, it is never calm, and though icy cold in summer, it never ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... of their Indian heroes, picturing them as models of manly beauty and nobility; but all fiction must be taken with liberal pinches of salt. The plain truth is that dark savages of the pure blood often do possess the magnetism of perfect physical development and unfathomable mental strangeness; but real beauty they never have. Their innate repulsiveness is so great that, like the snake's charm, it may fascinate; yet an indescribable, haunting disgust goes with it. And, ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... fault, as it is called) it would run down between the rock; and as it ran it would eat that hole wider and wider year by year, and make a swallow- hole—such as you may see in plenty if you ever go up Whernside, or any of the high hills in Yorkshire—unfathomable pits in the green turf, in which you may hear the water tinkling and ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... loud scream Had waked me from the fiendish dream, O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild, I wept as I had been a child; And having thus by tears subdued My anguish to a milder mood, Such punishments, I said, were due To natures deepliest stained with sin: For aye entempesting anew The unfathomable hell within The horror of their deeds to view, To know and loathe, yet wish and do! Such griefs with such men well agree, But wherefore, wherefore fall on me? To be beloved is all I need, And whom I love, I ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... tried to make her comprehend how blest I was, and what a darling Dora was. I entreated Agnes not to regard this as a thoughtless passion which could ever yield to any other, or had the least resemblance to the boyish fancies that we used to joke about. I assured her that its profundity was quite unfathomable, and expressed my belief that nothing like it had ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... own choosing—peace. He had no particular exercises afterwards, but remained calm and serene, speaking of himself daily as a great sinner, who had been overwhelmed with benefits, and declaring, that he had never in all his life before, had such delightful views of the unfathomable love and infinite condescension of the Saviour, as were now daily opening before him. "Oh, the love of Christ! the love of Christ!" he would suddenly exclaim, while his eye kindled, and the tears chased each other down his cheeks, "we cannot understand it now—but ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... she should see the evidence of her success in art, if art it was, not artlessness, as then I was compelled to think it. And she said the oddest things in the most unconventional way, skirting sometimes unfathomable abysms of thought, where I had hardly the courage to set foot. In short, she was fascinating in a thousand and fifty different ways, and at every step I executed a new and profounder emotional folly, a hardier ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... before Euripides had introduced the tragedy of mere human passion; that sensation tragedy, which is the only one the world knows now, and of which the world is growing rapidly tired—behind all, I say, lessons of the awful and unfathomable mystery of human existence, of unseen destiny; of that seemingly capricious distribution of weal and woe, to which we can find no solution on this side the grave, for which the old Greek could ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... and all the innumerable palaces and domes and spires of Genoa, and exclaims with rapture: "This majestic city—mine! To flame over it like the kingly Day; to brood over it with a monarch's power; all these sleepless longings, all these never satiated wishes to be drowned in that unfathomable ocean!" We admire Fiesco, we disapprove of him, and sympathise with him: he is crushed in the ponderous machinery which himself put in motion and thought to control: we lament his fate, but confess that it was not undeserved. ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... which was shaded, like the little windows, with fair white curtains, and looked comfortable enough, though by what kind of gymnastic exercise the lady of the caravan ever contrived to get into it, was an unfathomable mystery. The other half served for a kitchen, and was fitted up with a stove whose small chimney passed through the roof. It held also a closet or larder, several chests, a great pitcher of water, and a few cooking-utensils and articles of crockery. These latter ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... use for that hand presently, and, having sighed, lifted it to press it upon his brow, but did not complete the gesture. As his hand came within the scope of his gaze, levelled on the unfathomable distance, he observed that the fingers held a sheet of printed paper; and he remembered Florence. Instead of pressing his brow he unfolded the journal she had thrust upon him. As he began to read, his eye was lustreless, his gait slack and dreary; ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... went forward steadily, counting his paces to keep his mind from wandering, and to his great joy he came suddenly on an opening in the wall which led towards welcome light, away from the horrors of that unfathomable pit. The woman waited for him there, looking very ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... life is Memory: We walk upon a narrow path between Two gulfs—what is to be, and what has been, Led by a guide whose name is Destiny; Beyond is sightless gloom and mystery, From whose unfathomable depths we glean Chaotic hopes and terrors, dimly-seen Reflections ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... Tulkinghorn, without a ruffle on the surface of his unfathomable depths, drinking his old wine, and go ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... dark recesses, from their gloomy appearance, the imagination of superstition conceived to be the habitation of supernatural beings. In sailing, you discover many arms of the lake;—here, a bold headland, where black rocks dip into unfathomable water;—there, the white sand in the bottom of a bay, bleached for ages by the waves. In walking on the north side, the road is sometimes cut through the face of a solid rock, which rises upwards of 200 feet perpendicular above the lake. Sometimes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... they soften into velvet, but one seldom sees through them into the heart. But these eyes, though black beyond a doubt, had the darkness of deep, still water, when you look into it and see the surface mantling with a bluish gloss, and beneath that depth upon depth of black—clear, serene, unfathomable. And when a smile came into them,—ah, well! we all know how that same dark water looks when the sun strikes on it. The sun struck now, and little John felt warm and comfortable all ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... capsized, and I was floating in the water. I cried aloud his name, beseeching him to save me, and got only his mocking laugh in return, as he struck out for the shore. I could not swim, and I felt myself sinking down—down to unfathomable depths. I felt cold as ice; there was a deafening roar in my ears, and ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... stove-nigrification. Bill has, as it were, soared on the legs of the stove, like Perseus on Mercury's sandals, to unexplored realms of space and thought. At such moments the stove-pipe becomes to him a magic telescope, through which he peers far into the unfathomable depths. ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... me the degree of confidence which I felt I deserved. So justifiable, however, was his suspicion that even at the time I forgave him for it. I had on so many prior occasions "played possum" that the doctor naturally attributed complex and unfathomable motives to my most innocent acts. For a long time he seemed to think that I was trying to capture his confidence, win the privilege of an unlimited parole, and so effect my escape. Doubtless he had not forgotten the several plans for escape which I had dallied with ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... know of it? And yet Marzio did not want to do it, as he had wished to a few hours ago. As he looked down on the pale head he realised that he did not want Paolo to die. Standing on the sharp edge of the precipice where life ends and breaks off, close upon the unfathomable depths of eternity, himself firmly standing and fearing no fall, but seeing his brother slipping over the brink, he would put out his hand to save him, to draw him back. He would not have ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... help could be given, the maiden slid from the saddle and fell headlong into the river. The prince would have leaped in after her, but the soldiers seized hold of him and prevented him, for the river was of unfathomable depth, and no human aid could avail to remedy the misfortune ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... into my vitals with a chill premonition, as of something unnatural and, to me, unfathomable. It was a sentiment which I can only call anti-human. Even as those of Sylvia's persuasion held that the clergy should be celibate, so it seemed to me they viewed all purely human loves, ties, emotions, sentiments, and interests generally ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... boundless, immeasurable, measureless, unfathomable, countless, innumerable, numberless, unlimited, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... it falls like a great wall straight into the water; only daring little ferns and plants have a foothold on it; the lake is inaccessible from this direction. A narrow pathway winding in and out edged with water-reeds leads by it on the other side. This lake is said to be so deep that it is unfathomable; it is dark brown in colour, bitter and brackish to the taste. No fish can live in it. Learned men, called geologists, who study the crust of the earth, have decided that this region is not volcanic in origin as it would appear ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... it happen that so beautiful and inoffensive a being should taste, even to its dregs, the bitterest unhappiness? Oh, there must indeed be a mysterious, unfathomable meaning in the decrees of Providence which is beyond the comprehension of man; for no one on earth less deserved or needed "the uses of adversity" than Dumb Kate. Love, the mighty and lawless passion, came into the sanctuary ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... with orange and yellow. Overwhelmingly luminous, monstrously large, it filled a large portion of the visible sky, a sight that brought millions of tourists to the Jovian moons each year, a sight that even the old-timers still must stare at, drawn by some unfathomable fascination. ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... tired girl with the hunted look in her eyes had developed into an amazingly attractive young woman. Her fair skin had taken on a dazzling whiteness; her hair was richer and more luxuriant than of yore; but it was her eyes in which the chief alteration had occurred. These now held an unfathomable depth of tenderness, together with a roguish fear that the former alluring quality might be discovered. If her figure were not as unduly stout as the skinny virgins of Melkbridge declared it to be, there was no denying the rude health apparent in ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... of its intended powers. It is only in the latter light that it can be admitted to have any pretensions to fairness. The moment we launch into conjectures about the usurpations of the federal government, we get into an unfathomable abyss, and fairly put ourselves out of the reach of all reasoning. Imagination may range at pleasure till it gets bewildered amidst the labyrinths of an enchanted castle, and knows not on which side to turn to extricate itself from the perplexities ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... very interesting while she was speaking thus; her sorrows were somewhat assuaged. There was undoubtedly a certain pleasure in letting some one look down into the unfathomable, mysterious ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... incapable of being crossed by persons of uncleansed souls. Do thou, with the aid of the understanding cross that river having desires for its alligators. The world and its concerns constitute the ocean towards which that river runs. Genus and species constitute its unfathomable depth that none can understand. One's birth, O child, is the source from which that stream takes its rise. Speech constitutes its eddies. Difficult to cross, only men of learning and wisdom and understanding succeed in crossing it. Crossing it, thou ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... think, but that we shall awake in his likeness and see his face. We shall be 'together,'—we have that comfort given us, but it will be 'together with the Lord.' He is to be the centre of attraction and delight always. What an unfathomable mystery it must be to the angels that he is ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... never known Mrs. Hazleton before—he had never comprehended her fully. But now he knew her—now, though perhaps the depths were still unfathomable to his eyes, he felt that there was a strong commanding will within that beautiful form which would bear no trifling. He had often treated her with easy lightness—with no want of apparent respect indeed—but with the persuasions and arguments such as men of business often address to women ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... being reenacted within her and was torturing her. Germaine Astaing did not move, but stood with folded arms and anxious eyes, while Hortense Daniel sat distractedly awaiting the confession of the crime and the explanation of the unfathomable mystery. ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... chance at those damned British rascals;" and the wooden leg itself would twitch and rap on the floor in his impatient indignation. One of Hetty's earliest recollections was of being led about the farm by this warm-hearted, irascible, old grandfather, whose wooden leg was a perpetual and unfathomable mystery to her. Where the flesh leg left off and the wooden leg began, and if, when the wooden leg stumped so loud and hard on the floor, it did not hurt the flesh leg at the other end, puzzled little Hetty's head for many a long hour. Her grandfather's frequent and comic references to ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... fleeting glance of unfathomable scorn. And when I thought of all the sufferings I had gone through that term owing to her repulsive son and, indirectly, for her sake, I felt that the time had come ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... if my book must go out cold into the world (like all that may come after it from me), and my sister, who took more thought for others and less for herself than any other human being I have known, saw this, and by some means unfathomable to a man coaxed my mother into being once again the woman she had been. On a day but three weeks before she died my father and I were called softly upstairs. My mother was sitting bolt upright, as she loved to sit, in her old chair by the window, with a manuscript ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... and the least I could do was to thank him, if but in two lines. No need of it, said I; for I don't intend to have Mr. Williams: What then is that letter to me? Well, said she, I see thou art quite unfathomable! ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... Machynleth, in the eastern ravines of Snowdon. G—-! you'd lift up your hands, if you saw the ruins—how majestically they stand upon the naked peaks of the rocks; and how boldly the pointed arches rise into the air and throw themselves over the unfathomable chasms! Look up from below, and there on a moonlight night you'll see the white pillars all standing in rows, like so many wax lights: and, if one looks down from above, it's half enough to put thoughts into a man's head of ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... was, my hair stood on end, while I gazed afar down within the yawning abysses, letting imagination descend, as it were, and stalk about in the strange vaulted halls, and ruddy gulfs, and red ghastly chasms of the hideous and unfathomable fire. I had indeed made a narrow escape. Had the balloon remained a very short while longer within the cloud—that is to say—had not the inconvenience of getting wet, determined me to discharge the ballast, inevitable ruin would have been the consequence. Such perils, although little ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... In spite of the pain she knew she inflicted, she could not resist flirting with him just a little even at such a moment. It filled her with such exquisite joy to feel anew the power she exercised over him and the unfathomable depth of his love which each fresh thrust at his ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... no shadow of pity in those unfathomable eyes. I looked into them for a moment, but their shining jet revealed nothing below the surface—nothing ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... probability is heightened by the direction of the islands Nias, Batu, Mantawei, Pagi, Mego, etc., the similarity of the rock, soil, and productions, and the regularity of soundings between them and the main, whilst without them the depth is unfathomable. ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... though a city man were to direct a newcomer to Central Park, or impart to him a test for the destinations of trolley lines—yet Thorpe's new friends were profoundly impressed with his knowledge of occult things. The forest was to them, as to most, more or less of a mystery, unfathomable except to the favored of genius. A man who could interpret it, even a little, into the speech of everyday comfort and expediency possessed a strong claim to their imaginations. When he had finished these practical affairs, they wanted him to sit down and ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... grate, the breeches of the guns like goodly gold, and not a whisker of a rope's end curling the wrong way, if only she could have espied a swab, or a bucket, or a flake of holy-stone, or any indicament of labor done. "Artis est celare artem;" this art was unfathomable. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... (uncertain) 475; wonder &c 870; see through a glass darkly &c (ignorance) 491. not understand one another; play at cross purposes &c (misinterpret) 523. Adj. unintelligible, unaccountable, undecipherable, undiscoverable, unknowable, unfathomable; incognizable^, inexplicable, inscrutable; inapprehensible^, incomprehensible; insolvable^, insoluble; impenetrable. illegible, as Greek to one, unexplained, paradoxical; enigmatic, enigmatical, puzzling (secret) 533; indecipherable. obscure, dark, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... simple, so pliant, so capable of graceful adjustment. The head, however much it may contain of the actual look of Sophocles, must be idealized. To appreciate it properly one must remember that this poet, though he dealt with tragic themes, was not wont to brood over the sin and sorrow and unfathomable mystery of the world, but was serene in his temper and prosperous ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... ivory beauty in the full flower of her glorious youth—and I thought of Joyce. I felt that it was like her to have fallen in love simply but passionately at the mere lifting of the finger of Fate. It was only another demonstration of the unfathomable mystery, or miracle, which love is. Joyce was lucky, indeed favored of the gods, to have touched the spring in this girl's heart which no other man could reach, and by the rarest of chances—her coming out to this remote ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... world; a cry from another sphere. To those of us who once experienced the still and pitiless cold, a cry terribly suggestive of the horror-charged gloom, of the icy silence as unbroken as that of unfathomable deeps, of the stern and uncompromising individuality of ...
— Out of the North • Howard V. Sutherland
... upon which the Thugs found the divine origin of their sect. They believe that, in the earliest ages of the world, a gigantic demon infested the earth, and devoured mankind as soon as they were created. He was of so tall a stature, that when he strode through the most unfathomable depths of the great sea, the waves, even in tempest, could not reach above his middle. His insatiable appetite for human flesh almost unpeopled the world, until Bhawanee, Kalee, or Davee, the goddess of the Thugs, determined ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... are dejected downwards to ease the body of them, through the most hidden passages, and the most remote from the organs of the senses, lest these be offended at them. Thus the wonders of this machine are so great and numerous, that we find some unfathomable, even in the most abject and mortifying functions of the body, which modesty will not allow to be ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... is a most fictile world; and man is the most fingent plastic of creatures. A world not fixable; not fathomable! An unfathomable Somewhat, which is Not we; which we can work with, and live amidst,—and model, miraculously in our miraculous Being, and name World.—But if the very Rocks and Rivers (as Metaphysic teaches) are, in strict language, made by those outward Senses of ours, how much more, by the Inward ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... course, difficult and painful for that coarse and unfathomable vanity which is characteristic of every man, and which might be called malism, not to stir such a charming fire, to act the Joseph and the fool, to turn away his eyes, and, as it were, to put wax into his ears, like the companions of Ulysses did when they ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... and it is marvellous in our eyes? God understands it: though I do not. Be it what it may, it is a work of God. From God it comes: by God it is ruled and ordered. That at least I know: and let that be enough for me. And so we may say of life. When we are awed, and all but terrified, by the unfathomable mystery of life, we can at least take refuge in God. And if we be wise, we shall take refuge in God. Whatever we can or cannot know about it, this we know; that it is the gift of God. So thought the old Jewish Prophets and Psalmists; and spoke of a breath of God, a vapour, ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... walked over to the castle. Their consternation was unutterable when they found that Lord Mar was not there, threw themselves into a birling, to seek their friends upon the seas; and when they did espy them, the joy of Edwin was so great, that not even the unfathomable gulf could stop him from flying to the embrace ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... bounteous, the richest and finest wheat in all the world. Strange and unfathomable that so much of the bread of man, the staff of life, the hope of civilization in this tragic year 1917, should come from a vast, treeless, ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... delicate oval of the full face relieved against a background of atmospheric gold into which the golden surface tints of the hair faded imperceptibly. The eyebrows were arched a little over the earnest, unfathomable eyes; the lips were parted as if with impetuous breath; the whole head leaned slightly forward, giving prominence to the chin, which in reality retreated, a defect chiefly noticeable in profile. Ted had ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... 520:3 Unfathomable Mind is expressed. The depth, breadth, height, might, majesty, and glory of infinite Love fill all space. That is enough! Human language 520:6 can repeat only an infinitesimal part of what exists. The absolute ideal, man, is no more seen nor comprehended by mortals, than is His infinite ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... pass our lives riding or driving in the woods, in the fields. Ten days of liberty! And during those ten days no more lovers, no more lovers! And all those lovers, with what are they in love, with me or my money? That is the mystery, the unfathomable mystery." ...
— L'Abbe Constantin, Complete • Ludovic Halevy
... room without snuffing the candles or saying why he had entered. The most solemn mystery in the world continued its course. Evening passed, night came, and the feeling of suspense and softening of heart in the presence of the unfathomable did not lessen but increased. No ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... music was plain from many of his chance remarks. He was a brother-in-law of Andreas Doederlein, though he seemed to take anything but pride in the relationship. If any one mentioned Doederlein's name in his presence, he screwed up his face, and began to shuffle about uneasily on his chair. He was an unfathomable, impenetrable personality. Even if his years—he was forty-five—had not won for him a measure of esteem, the malicious and mordant scorn he heaped on his fellow-men would have done so. People said he had a good deal of money. If this was brought to his attention, he employed the most ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... face. This striking resemblance certainly impressed me, to begin with; but there is something in him besides the resemblance, which has impressed me more. I think the influence I am now trying to find is in his eyes. They are the most unfathomable grey eyes I ever saw, and they have at times a cold, clear, beautiful, irresistible glitter in them which forces me to look at him, and yet causes me sensations, when I do look, which I would rather not feel. Other parts of his face and head ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... nothing I wished for so much, and I never told Martyn of her little manoeuvres, knowing he would not stand them; and now what he will do, I can't think, unless you and Edward will take her off our hands. I believe you might do her good. She is an unfathomable mixture of sham and earnest, and she really likes you, and thinks much of you, as having a certain prestige, and being a woman of the world" (fancy that). "Besides, she is really religious in a sort of a way; much ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... happening to him and that it was taking him far out of his normal course. Even his love for Althea had not taken him out of his course; it had never been incalculable; it had been the ground he walked on, the goal he worked towards; what was happening now was like a current, swift and unfathomable, that was bearing him ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... sentimental tales, and cheap apologues, Mrs. Sand proclaims HER truth—that we need a new Messiah, and that the Christian religion is no more! O awful, awful name of God! Light unbearable! Mystery unfathomable! Vastness immeasurable!—Who are these who come forward to explain the mystery, and gaze unblinking into the depths of the light, and measure the immeasurable vastness to a hair? O name, that God's people of old did fear to utter! O light, that God's prophet would have perished had he seen! ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... other on the whole very well. Only in minor points did their sympathy fail. And as Edwin would be exasperated because Maggie's attitude towards argument was that of a woman, so would Maggie resent a certain mulishness in him characteristic of the unfathomable stupid sex. Once a week, for example, when his room was 'done out,' there was invariably a skirmish between them, because Edwin really did hate anybody to 'meddle among his things.' The derangement of even a brush on the dressing-table would rankle in ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... surely find In the deeps of his consciousness To wake up a dim reminiscence. Dreamy shadows might haunt him, Shadows of beautiful faces, and of terrible; Large, lustrous eyes, full of celestial meanings, Looking up at him, beseeching him, From unfathomable abysses, With glances which were a language. The finalest secrets and mysteries, Behind every sight, and sound, and color, Behind all motions, and harmonies, Which floated round about him, Archetypes of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... by day. She looked older for one thing; her face was pinched, and a little sallow and for the first time I noticed that her cheek-bones were too high. Her eyes, too, had lost their velvet depth: fine eyes still, but not unfathomable. But the smile with which she greeted me was charming: it ran over her tired face like a lamp-lighter kindling flames ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... caused the little room to be very nicely decorated for the wife of her favorite); and she would have felt very happy away from her cruel stepmother and all the hard work she had been made to do, had it not been for the dark water that lay black and unfathomable below the door and the fear of ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... patches of turf still as grey as hoarfrost in the shadow on the edge of a wood, and from wayside hollies whose leaf-points were all starred in silver. The blue bow overhead was stainless, not a cloud in it nor a mist: azure, azure, and unfathomable, like the heart of man, or the justice of God.—Isabel was not shy now but alert and radiant, as if she had caught a sparkle from the air: and expansive, as women are when they are sure of pleasing. "'For the jaded man of the world at her side, the young girl's rustic freshness ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... there were ladies in the boats he passed, otherwise taking no more note of the presence of human beings than of that of the deer, or the wild fowl on the water. He was not a handsome man, but there was a something in his face at which all looked twice,—men as well as women. It was an unfathomable look,—partly of pain, partly of antagonism. His eyes habitually sought the sky, yet they did not seem to perceive what they gazed upon; it was as if they would ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... Lord with injustice," said the angel; "His way is truth, and His judgments equitable. Recollect how often thou hast read, 'The decrees of God are unfathomable.' Know that he who lost his foot, lost it for a former crime. With the same foot he maliciously spurned his mother, and cast her from a chariot—for which eternal condemnation overtook him. The knight, his master, was desirous ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... agitation, spreading through the infinite cathedral to its agony; then was completed the passion of the mighty fugue. The golden tubes of the organ which as yet had but sobbed and muttered at intervals—gleaming amongst clouds and surges of incense—threw up, as from fountains unfathomable, columns of heart-shattering music. Choir and antichoir were filling fast with unknown voices. Thou also, Dying Trumpeter! with thy love which was victorious, and thy anguish that was finishing, didst enter the tumult; trumpet and echo—farewell ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... looked at him in still greater astonishment, opening her eyes slowly until they seemed like two pellucid lakelets of unfathomable depth into which March felt inclined to fling himself, clothes and all, and be drowned comfortably. She then looked at the fire, then at March again. It was evident that she had not been accustomed to hold intercourse with jocular minds. ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... straight into his wife's eyes. The enlarged pupils of the woman received his stare into their unfathomable depths. ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... have expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst the corpses of a battlefield. But there was the fact facing me—the fact dazzling, to be seen, like the foam on the depths of the sea, like a ripple on an unfathomable enigma, a mystery greater—when I thought of it—than the curious, inexplicable note of desperate grief in this savage clamor that had swept by us on the river-bank, behind the blind ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... greedily, that they were afterwards seized with the dysentery. The 24th they entered the straits, sailing past an island in the middle, and came in the evening past the island of Capul, seven miles within the straits, near which they found whirlpools, where the sea was of an unfathomable depth, so far ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... entered, pounced upon it and enslaved it. This however we can and ought to subdue, by prayer, by self-abasement before the Lord, by confessing our vast guilt, and by boundless gratitude to him for his unfathomable love; and then we see and hear the things that are curtained from us by space and time; we are here and there; the future comes forward and, like the past, pours out its secrets before us; the whole realm of knowledge, ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... and forwards very frequently themselves, and received a full report from Nicholas every morning. These were proud times for Mrs Nickleby; never was anybody half so discreet and sage as she, or half so mysterious withal; and never were there such cunning generalship, and such unfathomable designs, as she brought to bear upon Mr Frank, with the view of ascertaining whether her suspicions were well founded: and if so, of tantalising him into taking her into his confidence and throwing ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... Voice: "To thee, O Hadji, I come from the Beautiful Sea; the interminable, unfathomable sea, that begins at the Outer-Edge-Of-Things and stretches away into Neverness. I speak from out the Deeps Beneath. I tell of the Great That Is. I am a Voice of Life, O Hadji, and mine it is to begin for you The Tale of ...
— The Uncrowned King • Harold Bell Wright
... were one with its dewy stillness. The lustre of the early stars first broke in upon our dreaming: we looked up and around: the yellow constellations began to sing their choral hymn together. As the night deepened they came out swiftly from their hiding places in depths of still and unfathomable blue; they hung in burning clusters; they advanced in multitudes that dazzled: the shadowy shining of night was strewn all over with nebulous dust of silver, with long mists of gold with jewels of glittering green. We felt how fit a place the earth was to live ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... opposite slope. Some petrified shrubs ran fantastically here and there. Fishes got up under our feet like birds in the long grass. The massive rocks were rent with impenetrable fractures, deep grottos, and unfathomable holes, at the bottom of which formidable creatures might be heard moving. My blood curdled when I saw enormous antennae blocking my road, or some frightful claw closing with a noise in the shadow of some cavity. Millions of luminous spots shone brightly in the midst of the darkness. ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... because, by her continual bustling activity she troubled his pious thought and spiritual raptures. His three children were brought up in his brother's house, and he himself lived the life of an anchorite in the little cabin—a life of fancy strained to the utmost, of passionate prayers and unfathomable mystic contemplations. ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... span the unfathomable with a mean and grasping desire. Now she knew what she must try to do; to give up the lesser ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... cats that were always sunning themselves on the steps, and seemed to have grown old and gray in waiting for mice that had never come. They looked as if they knew the past and the future. If the owl is the bird of Minerva, the cat should be her beast; they have the same sleepy air of unfathomable wisdom. There was such a quiet and potent spell about the place that one could almost fancy these constant animals to be the transformed bodies of human visitors who had stayed too long. Who knew what tales might be told by these ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... into the unfathomable infinity of space, Owen wondered what manner of Being or Power it was that had originated and sustained all this? Considered as an explanation of the existence of the universe, the orthodox Christian religion was too absurd ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... of our municipal government. They pretend to think that the impeachment of governors is common and ought to be commoner. One delicious M.P. asked me: "Now, since the Governor of New York is impeached, who becomes Vice-President[23]?" Ignorance, unfathomable ignorance, is at the bottom of much of it; if the Town Treasurer of Yuba Dam gets a $100 "rake off" on a paving contract, our city ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... sitting with me at her mother's feet, sometimes so near that her dark, shining hair brushed against my cheek, and her fragrant breath came on my face; and when she caressed my hand, and gazed full at me with those dear eyes that had no shadow of regret or anxiety in them, but only unfathomable love, I could imagine that our union was already complete, that she was altogether and ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... strong, compact forehead, in the somewhat severe style which imperial beauty has rendered classic in our time. Her eyes were of the Oriental type,—full, heavy-lidded, ambushed in thick, black lashes,—themselves dark and unfathomable as the long night of mystery which hangs over the history of her wild and wandering race, those unsubduable, unseducible children of Nature,—the voluntary Pariahs of the world. Sad were those eyes always, but with a vague, uncommunicable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... spiritual truths, or truth-powers,—not of notions and conceptions, the manufacture of the understanding,—is therefore 'simplex et nuda', that is, immediate; like the clear blue heaven of Italy, deep and transparent, an ocean unfathomable in its depth, and yet ground all the way. Still as meditation soars upwards, it meets the arched firmament with all its suspended lamps of light. O, let not the 'simplex et nuda' of Gregory be perverted to the Socinian, 'plain and easy for ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... sheep and pigs and heavyhooved kine from pasturelands of Lusk and Rush and Carrickmines and from the streamy vales of Thomond, from the M'Gillicuddy's reeks the inaccessible and lordly Shannon the unfathomable, and from the gentle declivities of the place of the race of Kiar, their udders distended with superabundance of milk and butts of butter and rennets of cheese and farmer's firkins and targets of lamb and crannocks of corn and oblong eggs in great ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps. When, formerly, I have analyzed my partiality for some farm which I had contemplated purchasing, I have frequently found that I was attracted solely by a few square rods of impermeable and unfathomable bog,—a natural sink in one corner of it. That was the jewel which dazzled me. I derive more of my subsistence from the swamps which surround my native town than from the cultivated gardens in the village. There are no richer parterres to my eyes than the dense beds of dwarf andromeda (Cassandra ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... they yielded to the glamour of the divine knowledge that amidst the chaos of eternity each soul had found its mate. There was no need for words. Love, tremendous in its power, unfathomable in its mystery, had cast its spell over them. They were garbed in light, throned in a palace built by fairy hands. On all sides squatted the ghouls of privation, misery, danger, even grim death; but they heeded not the Inferno; they had created ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... Newfoundland have suddenly sunk. Cable ships repairing a broken cable, snapped by the earthquake of November 18th, 1929, report that for distances of a hundred miles on the Grand Banks the cables have disappeared into unfathomable depths. And before the subterranean cataclysm, they were within six hundred feet of the surface. And all the bottom of that section of the North Atlantic seems to have caved in. Ten thousand square miles dropped out of the bottom of the ocean! Fact, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various |
