"Indescribably" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as familiarly as Punch, or Paul Pry, or Pierrot. He is a gravely comic personage with a bandage over one eye, a battered hat considerably inclining to the back of his head, a coat with a high collar and long tails, and a tout ensemble indescribably seedy—something between a street preacher and a travelling showman. But here we are. Take care how you come down, and ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... approached in character that described by Hawthorne as occurring in the grounds of the Villa Borghese when Donatello, with a simple "tambourine," produced music of such "indescribably potency" that sallow, haggard, half-starved peasants, French soldiers, scarlet-costumed contadinas, Swiss guards, German artists, English lords, and herdsmen from the Campagna, all "joined hands in the dance" which the musician himself ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... and Kinchinjhow; which, being loosened, precipitated avalanches of rocks and snow. We proceeded amidst dense fog, soon followed by hard rain; the roar of falling rocks on either hand increasing as these invisible giants spoke to one another in voices of thunder through the clouds. The effect was indescribably grand: and as the weather cleared, and I obtained transient peeps of their precipices of blue ice and black rock towering 5000 feet above me on either hand, the feeling of awe produced was almost overpowering. Heavy banks of vapour still veiled the mountains, but the rising mist exposed a broad ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... travelled roads in the world, and certainly amongst the most famous. In every age and from all countries thousands of pilgrims landing at Jaffa have trodden this ancient road to the Holy City. The first part of it is indescribably beautiful, leading as it does through some of the orange groves which surround Jaffa. In the springtime, if you turn your horse a mile or two away from the town an incomparable view is spread before your ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... rendered her. She then said—and I shall never forget it—'Mr. Ellerthorpe, you don't seem to know who I am?' I said, 'No, I don't;' when, to my surprise, she answered, 'I am that little girl, Jane Gough, whom you saved from drowning in Hessle harbour.' My feelings were indescribably pleasant and ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... she said, with a rush of feeling. It was the first time she had ever called me by name. She bent her face down. Over it there passed a look of sweetness and sadness indescribably blended. "Ah, Adam! you have asked me many times to marry you! Make me believe once that you love me! Make me feel that I could trust myself to you ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... was indescribably flattering, and all the more so that it followed so quickly on her slight reproof. The tone in which she spoke had become low and timid, and I observed that she turned her head quickly towards a second door of the room; I fancied that the gentleman in the black ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... chimpanzee or ourang-outang. It is a revolting thing that a writer who is so pious and Christian in his sentiments as Jung Stilling should use a simile like this, in his Scenen aus dem Geisterreich. (Bk. II. sc. i., p. 15.) "Suddenly the skeleton shriveled up into an indescribably hideous and dwarf-like form, just as when you bring a large spider into the focus of a burning glass, and watch the purulent blood hiss and bubble in the heat." This man of God then was guilty of such infamy! or looked on quietly when another was committing it! in either case it comes to the same ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... beautiful, indescribably beautiful!" exclaimed the old Oak Tree, rejoicingly. "I have them all around me, great and small; not one has been forgotten! How can so much happiness be imagined? How ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... days, would sometimes assume such a beautiful, melancholy expression—it was with that he was always photographed in my memory—but the features had now acquired a striking sharpness, and in the quick glance I caught there was an expression, both suffering and searching, which made me indescribably sad. I have seen sick people look at me in the same way, when they were afraid they were to be operated upon; and I thought I now understood at any rate this much, that what wanted operating on here was my friend's confidence, and this ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... in damask linen; and even where the marble is carven in vast and heavy folds over a pulpit to simulate a curtain, or wrought in figures on the steps of the high-altar to represent a carpet, it has no richness of effect, but a poverty, a coldness, a harshness indescribably table-clothy. I think all this has tended to chill the soul of the sacristan, who is the feeblest and thinnest sacristan conceivable, with a frost of white hair on his temples quite incapable of thawing. In this dreary sanctuary is one of Titian's great paintings, The Martyrdom of St. ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... condemned, renounced. What she had lost in youthfulness she had gained in character. She had an innocent nobility of expression that came from a light within, as of one ready to answer unwaveringly wherever she might be called. Yet something in her soft eyes at times trembled into being, indescribably gentle, intolerably sweet—the soul of that Dosia who was ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... of my relatives! Believe me, Titus, I many a time should like to go to you and seek rest for my oppressed heart; but as this is not possible, I often hurry, without knowing why, into the street. But there also nothing allays or diverts my longing. I return home to... long again indescribably... I have not yet rehearsed my Concerto; in any case I shall leave all my treasures behind me by Michaelmas. In Vienna I shall be condemned to sigh and groan! This is the consequence of having no longer a free heart! You who know this indescribable ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Murillo has colour, but then he was always an Andalusian. Just as Velazquez borrowed very little from his sitters and gave a great deal, so he claimed next to nothing from the primary colours, and he gave a colour sense that is indescribably beautiful to silver and grey. This was his deliberate choice and judgment, but it is impossible to forget that surroundings and associations must have had a great deal to do with it. Men who live lives that are complete in the fullest ...
— Velazquez • S. L. Bensusan
... husband upon these golden shores. Without informing him of her intention, she undertook the long journey, and arrived last week. The joy of the husband may be easier imagined than described. The meeting is said to have been indescribably affecting. We trust her example ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... mischievous ape, who was at length discovered in what my brother dignified by the title of his laboratory, where, in a frenzy of gleeful activity, he was examining first one bottle and then another; finally he betook himself, with indescribably grotesque grinnings and chatterings, to uncorking and sniffing at them, and then pouring their contents deliberately out on the (luckily carpetless) floor,—a joke which might have had serious results for himself, as well as the house, if he had not in the midst of it suffered ignoble capture ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the view on a clear day is splendid. On the slope stand a few large trees, whose cleft leaves frame the indescribably blue sea, which breaks in snowy lines in the lava-boulders below. Far off, I can see Malekula, with its forest-covered mountains, and summer clouds hanging above it. It is a dreamlike summer day, so beautiful, bright and mild as to be hardly ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... destruction of the world. It is always protected with great vigilance by the gods, and it is from this bow that the one wielded by Arjuna hath taken its name. Endued with the strength of a hundred thousand bows, the power it assumes at the hour of battle is indescribably great. It punishes all punishable wicked kings endued with the nature of Rakshasas. This fierce weapon was first created by Brahman, the utterer of the Vedas. The great preceptor Sukra hath said that this weapon is a terrible one in respect of all kings. Endued ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... sky; then, like a gorgeous butterfly emerging from a dusky chrysalis, came the Eastern day, and we felt as if living in a world warmed by a hundred suns. The warm, intoxicating light took possession of our senses, and so sweet, so rarefied, so indescribably delicious was the air, that it seemed to give wings to our dull bodies. Every now and then we were overtaken by clouds of locusts, their little wings glistening like diamonds against the soft sky, or flocks of starlings darkened the air, or a serried line of wild geese passed majestically ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... Polly, in which the beaming affection of her sanguine nature, and the scowl of scarce restrained impatience to get hold of me, were mixed so strangely as to give her naturally sharp black eyes an expression almost fearful to a child; but on surveying her unique apparel, and indescribably uneasy position on the chair—for she remained seated while the rest of us knelt, giving me thus an opportunity to scrutinize her through the interstices of my chair-back—so excited my girlish risibilities, that fear became stifled in suppressed laughter. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... without receiving a hint of what conditions must be, for in the outlying streets he had seen sights and smelled odors that had sickened him; but now that he was face to face with the worst, now that he breathed the very breath of misery, he could scarcely credit what he saw. A stench, indescribably nauseating, assailed him and Jacket as they mingled with the crowd, for as yet their nostrils were unused to poverty and filth. It was the rancid odor that arises from unwashed, unhealthy bodies, and it testified eloquently to the living-conditions ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... my mind something indescribably peaceful and even sad about that view, a mute sympathy with the Past that I could hardly account for, seeing that I was Colonial born and bred. For the first time since my arrival in England the real beauty of the place came home upon me. I felt as if I could ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... her mind from the noises over the hedge. But every head-line seemed to dart at her sore consciousness as if it were a snake's head with a sting in it. Murder. Unrest. Strikes. Dissatisfactions. Change. The whole outlook was indescribably comfortless and depressing to her. She felt something akin to the vague, apprehensive misery—beyond reason or common sense—which people feel during the ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... only see the little two-years-old Gabriele, with her large, serious brown eyes; her refined, somewhat pale, but indescribably lovely countenance; her bewitching little gestures; you would be just as much taken with her as the rest are,—you would find it difficult, as we all do, not to spoil her. She is a quiet little child, but very unlike her eldest sister. A predominating characteristic of Gabriele is ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... is poison to my soul! Helen, Helen! You do not understand—you will never understand! Here, in the very air I breathe, I fancy I can trace the perfume she shakes from her garments as she moves; something indescribably fascinating yet terrible attracts me to her; it is an evil attraction, I know, but I cannot resist it. There is something wicked in every man's nature; I am conscious enough that there is something detestably wicked in mine, and I have not sufficient goodness to overbalance it. And this ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... flushing of the mountains at sunrise and sunset, and the magnificence of the windy, wintry noon. The rocky spires, pinnacles, and domes, glowing with gorgeous golden light, and the lower ranges, shaded with hazy blue, umber-red, and luminous purple, fell into picture and formed prospects indescribably pure and pellucid. But the average of the aneroid (29.19) gave an altitude of eight hundred feet; and even in this submaritime region, the minimum temperature was 42 deg. F., ranging to a maximum of 85 deg F. in the shade. These are extremes ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... of Sydney; not very clerical, you will say, but indescribably amusing to the hearers, whatever the readers may think of them. Nothing can present a more striking contrast to his rapid, loud, laughing utterance, and his rector-like amplitude and rubicundity, than the low, slow, emphatic tone, and the corpse-like face of Rogers. ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... had walked hurriedly along quiet by-streets to the ROSENTAL. But before she had advanced a hundred yards, her courage began to fail, and the further she went, the more her spirits sank. Her surroundings were indescribably depressing: the smirched, steadily retreating snow was leaving bare all the drab brownness it had concealed—all the dismal little gardens, and dirty corners. Houses, streets and people wore their most bedraggled air. Particularly the people: they were as ugly as the areas of roof and stone, off ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... vigilant eye as they marched, upon every height where a scout might be posted, and scanned the solitary landscapes and the distant ravines, to observe any column of smoke; but nothing of the kind was to be seen; all was indescribably stern and lifeless. ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... Leader looked at the Colonel with that indescribably horrid smile, the owner's approval of the proud beast seemed to ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... "Does that hurt you, sir?" said I in a soothing and affectionate tone of voice. "Like the devil," growled the patient. "And here?" said I. "Oh! oh! I can't bear it any longer." "Oh! I perceive," said I, "the thing is just as I expected." Here I raised my eyebrows, and looked indescribably wise at ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... Stir every day until the candy dissolves. Cover with cloth until it is through fermenting. Back off, bottle immediately, and seal, or tie down the corks. The wine in perfection is a pale pink, very clear, and of a peculiar but indescribably delicious flavor. ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... sometimes to drop from the ceiling, and sometimes to be thrown at them. In one of the passages all sorts of queer sounds, such as whinings, meanings, screeches, clangings of pails and rattlings of chains, were heard, whilst something, no one could ever see distinctly, but which they all felt to be indescribably nasty, rushed up the cellar steps and flew past, as if engaged in a desperate chase. Indeed, the disturbances were of so constant and harrowing a nature, that the wing had to be vacated and was eventually ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... strange bird-creature hovering a few yards from his face in the darkness was indescribably unpleasant to Woodhouse. As his thought returned he concluded that it must be some night-bird or large bat. At any risk he would see what it was, and pulling a match from his pocket, he tried to ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... yards-thick concrete shuddered and strained. The tremendous pressure forced trickles of water into the concrete shell: the roaring of the elements was indescribably deafening. ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... said, "dey used to weave what dey called nigger-cloth, an' each one of us got jes' sech a strip, an' had to wear it width-wise. Them that was short got along pretty well, but as for me"—She gave an indescribably droll glance at her long limbs and then at us, and added,—"Tell YOU, I had enough of Bloomers in ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... men still had pre-war notions and were poor. Ten months would steal imperceptibly by, and the mysterious revolution would be effected. Then, the second class and the first class would be packed, indescribably packed, crowded, on all great trains: and the third class carriages, lo and behold, would be comparatively empty. Oh, marvellous days of bankruptcy, when nobody ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... Pao-yue was indescribably joyous, and, as he raised his head, he perceived that the text on the tablet consisted of the three characters: the Board of Ill-fated lives; and that on each side was ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... on in the forties he suddenly fell with a crash, and had to fly the country. He was never able to show his face in England again, and died a diseased exile in a foreign land. And all because he had been overtaken by sexual sin of an indescribably shameful kind. The shock he gave me was one of sorrow, for he had been a friend. But it was still more one of amazement that such a thing could have happened to such a man. Later I came to understand. When his effects were being sold there was found in his ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... found a miserable hut, where the people were indescribably poor and dirty. A team was engaged after some delay to carry us to Tishialuk, thirty miles farther on our journey, which place we reached the following ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... wild roses make the wood paths beautiful, and the indescribably delicious fragrance of the sweet-brier betrays its location on the dry banks ...
— Harper's Young People, June 8, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the rifts in the leather. This the judge did gaily, now humming a snatch of song, now listening civilly to Mahaffy, now replying with undisturbed cheerfulness. Last of all he clapped his dingy beaver on his head, giving it an indescribably jaunty slant, and stepped ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... upon a brown gash torn in a hillside above the stream, a place where natives were apparently working to build up the bank against erosion. In contrast to the beauty that surrounded it, the bare earth was indescribably ugly, like a livid scar in a woman's face. In his mind Lord saw this scar multiplied a thousand times—no, a million times—when the machines of the galaxy came to rip out resources for the trade cities. He envisioned ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox
... different from any Gordon had known before. He did not know what his real sentiments were; he did not even attempt to analyse them. He only knew that when he was with Morcombe he was indescribably happy. There was something in him so natural, so unaffected, so sensitive to beauty. After this Morcombe came up to Gordon's study nearly every evening, and usually Foster left them alone together, and went off in search ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... a corner of the valley, and beyond, far below us, looms the town of Sorata. From this distance the red tile roofs, the soft blue, green, and yellow of its stuccoed walls, look indescribably fresh and grateful. A closer inspection will probably dissipate this impression; it will be squalid and dirty, the river-stone paving of its street will be deep in the accumulation of filth, dirty Indian children will swarm in them with mangy dogs and bedraggled ducks, the gay frescoes ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... in outline, the long drooping moustache giving place to a close-cut beard. The eyes alone stayed the same, steady, luminous, a living silence in them at once formidable and strangely sad. Finally—and this the poor child found indescribably agitating and even horrible—their silence was broken by a question. For they asked what she, Damaris, meant to say, meant to do, when he—her father, the all-powerful Commissioner Sahib of her babyhood's faith and devotion—came home here, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... cried Agnes. "Last time he forgot I was coming altogether." She wore a flowered muslin—something indescribably liquid and cool. It reminded him a little of those swift piercing streams, neither blue nor green, that gush out of the dolomites. Her face was clear and brown, like the face of a mountaineer; her hair was so plentiful that ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... she said 'Hush!' at that was a flash of genius. It was indescribably eloquent. She forbade and invited in the same breath. It was wonderful, and it made me Buckingham. And Buckingham it brought to her feet. Little wonder. It would have brought a cardinal. In the passionate rhetoric of my ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... the Place Royale: facades of brick with stone corners, and slated roofs, tri-colored houses;—the Paris of Louis XIII., at the Val-de-Grace: a crushed and squat architecture, with vaults like basket-handles, and something indescribably pot-bellied in the column, and thickset in the dome;—the Paris of Louis XIV., in the Invalides: grand, rich, gilded, cold;—the Paris of Louis XV., in Saint-Sulpice: volutes, knots of ribbon, clouds, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... indescribably appealing and pathetic in her whole look and air. Outside the window stood a slender little bird which had fluttered there, spent and worn, and did not try to flit away any further. Too early had it flown from its southern abode; too early abandoned the warm airs, the flowers and leafage, of a ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... none of the arts. As to music the Sunday School Times advertised that C. Harold Lowden, "known to thousands through his sacred compositions," had written a new masterpiece, "entitled 'Yearning for You.' The poem, by Harry D. Kerr, is one of the daintiest you could imagine and the music is indescribably beautiful. Critics are agreed that it will sweep the country. May be made into a charming sacred song by substituting the hymn words, 'I Heard the ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... in which hoarse cries from many voices, a heavy thud and rumble on wood, and a crash of timbers and a gurgle and a splash were indescribably mingled; the gun under which Abel Keeling had lain had snapped her rotten breechings and plunged down the deck, carrying Bligh's unconscious form with it. The deck came up vertical, and for one instant longer Abel Keeling ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... recollections of my childhood, I don't know. Whether I had come there with any lingering fancy that I was still to love little Em'ly, I don't know. I know that I was filled with pleasure by all this; but, at first, with an indescribably sensitive pleasure, that a very little would have changed ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... This is really one of the most covetable little volumes in the world. It is a copy printed UPON VELLUM; with most beautiful illuminations, in the purest Italian taste. Look—if ever you visit the Imperial Library—at the last illumination, at the bottom of o v, recto. It is indescribably elegant. But the binder should have been hung in chains. He has cut the book to the very quick—so as almost to have entirely sliced away several of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... heart, both from busy anticipation, and from the parting which was at hand, had made me incapable of any other thought or attention but such as pointed to the coming journey. All circumstances in travelling, all scenes and situations of a representative and recurring character, are indescribably affecting, connected, as they have been, in so many myriads of minds, more especially in a land which is sending off forever its flowers and blossoms to a clime so remote as that of India, with heart-rending separations, and with farewells never to be repeated. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... February—and yew-hedges and cottage windows, she would have broken down. As it was, she just enjoyed it. She enjoyed glimpsing in through uncurtained windows, into sordid rooms where human beings moved as if sordidly unaware. She enjoyed the smell of a toasted bloater, rather burnt. So common! so indescribably common! And she detested bloaters, because of the hairy feel of the spines in her mouth. But to smell them like this, to know that she was in the region of "penny beef-steaks," gave her a ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... north," continued Mr. Leet, "is high and dry and sightly. The view it commands of the Water Works is indescribably fine. You are surely practical enough to see, Mr. Baker, that by purchasing that strip and throwing it in with yours you will have a subdivision fronting upon Dandelion Place which would offer unparalleled ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... and for a long time the reconstruction of all my theories of life on a purely pagan basis occupied my whole attention. The exquisite outlines of the marvellous castle, the romantic woods, the horses moving, the lovers leaning to each other's faces enchanted me; and then the indescribably beautiful description of the performance of As You Like It, and the supreme relief and perfect assuagement it brings to Rodolph, who then sees Mdlle. de Maupin for the first time in woman's attire. If she were dangerously ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... circle of well-wooded hills. After Como and Maggiore, which are like inland seas, the Lago d'Orta with its pretty island of San Giulio, all so small that one may see the whole picture at a glance, is indescribably lovely. The waters here are said to be of a deeper blue than anywhere else in Italy, probably because the lake is fed from springs which issue from its rocky bed. The whole town of Orta, as well as the lake, is a blaze of color with the gay awnings of its many ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... suddenly to a hurricane. The dark hurry and tumult, the stress and vehemence of the battle rushed in and overwhelmed them. They were no longer persons but mere spectators, mere impressions of a tremendous convulsion. They became unreal even to themselves, miniatures of personality, indescribably small, and the two antagonistic realities, the only realities in being were first the city, that throbbed and roared yonder in a belated frenzy of defence and secondly the aeroplanes hurling inexorably towards them over the ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... on, "I have suffered indescribably since that terrible morning when I missed her and understood her mission. I followed quickly—I was without when you entered, but I came too late. Since then I have waited, unwilling to go to you, certain that the gods would permit the possible. And ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... enemies of his people—in all things a worthy chieftain of a noble race. The one and only time in life I saw him was when he was a broken and a hunted man and when the pallor of death was upon his cheeks, but even then I was impressed by the majesty of his bearing, the dignity of his poise, the indescribably magnetic glance of his wondrous eyes, and the lineaments of power in every gesture, every tone and every movement. He awed and he attracted at the same time. He stood strikingly out from all others at that meeting at Tralee, where I was one of a deputation from Killarney who ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... to me at any hour, but most of all I loved them in the long summer evenings when the burst of sunset splendor had deepened into twilight. Then the afterglow softened to that purple loveliness indescribably rare and sweet, wreathed round by gray cloudfolds melting into exquisite pink, the last far echo of the daylight's glory. It is said that any land is beautiful to us only by association. Was it the light heart of my boyhood, ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... looked out through the rifts in the half-naked trees; into the sky, clear and sparkling beyond; on his face an expression of sadness, of joy, of abandon—all blended indescribably. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... grew indescribably rough. The desert floor became a series of sand dunes, a rise and fall of sea-like billows over which they climbed like ants over a new-plowed field. In the hollow of each wave they rested, sinking in the sand, where, breathless and scorching, the air scintillated above their motionless ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... of his time. The characteristic of the modern movements par excellence is the apotheosis of the insignificant. Whether it be the school of poetry which sees more in one cowslip or clover-top than in forests and waterfalls, or the school of fiction which finds something indescribably significant in the pattern of a hearth-rug, or the tint of a man's tweed coat, the tendency is the same. Maeterlinck stricken still and wondering by a deal door half open, or the light shining out of a window at night; Zola filling ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... as of old; the great bird was poised aloft in the clear blue air, and the mountain wind came over the heights and blew refreshingly around the children as they sat on the sunlit slope. It was all indescribably enjoyable to Clara and Heidi. Now and again a young goat came and lay down beside them; Snowflake came oftenest, putting her little head down near Heidi, and only moving because another goat came and drove her away. Clara had learned to know them ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... entered, an old woman, bent and indescribably wrinkled, rose from her knees before a deep old-fashioned fireplace on the other side of the little kitchen, and came to meet them. She had evidently just coaxed a ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... place once more in the likeness of some great glass bowl, all precious concave crystal, set delicately humming by the play of a moist finger round its edge. The concave crystal held, as it were, this mystical other world, and the indescribably fine murmur of its rim was the sigh there, the scarce audible pathetic wail to his strained ear, of all the old baffled forsworn possibilities. What he did therefore by this appeal of his hushed presence was to wake them into such measure of ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... the antique masks of Erigone, had an air of encouraging the audacious; but her long, shadowy lashes drooped discreetly over the jollity of the lower part of the face as though to call a halt. There was something indescribably harmonious and striking about her entire dress. She wore a gown of mauve barege, little reddish brown buskins, whose ribbons traced an X on her fine, white, open-worked stockings, and that sort of muslin spencer, a Marseilles ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... were so numerous and so brilliant as to produce a faint imitation of daylight, even at our immense height above the ground, and the dome of cloud out of which we had emerged assumed a soft fawn color which produced an indescribably beautiful effect. ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... of lunar south latitude lies this enormous enclosure, the area of which is not less than 16,500 square miles. Both in its interior and on its walls are many peaks and secondary craters. The telescopic view of a sunrise upon the surface of Clavius is truly said by Maedler to be indescribably magnificent. One of the peaks rises to a height of 24,000 feet above the bottom of one of the included craters. Maedler even expressed the opinion that in this wild neighbourhood there are craters so profound that no ray of sunlight ever penetrated their lowest depths, while, as if in compensation, ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... details of the dreadful events of the day, and gave them the particulars of his own escape from the Tuileries when all was seen to be lost and when the Swiss, having burnt their last cartridge, were submitting to wholesale massacre at the hands of the indescribably furious mob. ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... and the best performers from the Italian opera. The solos were sung by Mesdames Grimm and Couraud, and by Bassine and Chapuis, the latter being one of the best tenors in the city. Some of the quartettes, with accompaniments of harps and wind instruments, were indescribably beautiful. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... delicious blue; the coarse bushes did not look so dry, nor the sickly prickly-pears so unwholesome and like flat oval cakes of horribly unwholesome human flesh joined together at their edges; while the little patch of pasture where Sandho was feeding appeared to be of an indescribably ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... afternoon he had driven in the splendid, cushioned carriage with his young wife, how they had both wept with fright and grief, and when they had finished crying had eaten hard-boiled eggs: but what had happened after that had all become blurred—indescribably ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... it, sir?" she said; "what shall I fetch?" Her instantaneous resumption of the serving-maid's relation to him jarred on Willan at that second indescribably, and shut down like a floodgate on the words he was ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... assemblage of conifers surpassing all that have ever yet been discovered in the forests of the world. Here indeed is the tree-lover's paradise; the woods, dry and wholesome, letting in the light in shimmering masses of half sunshine, half shade; the night air as well as the day air indescribably spicy and exhilarating; plushy fir-boughs for campers' beds and cascades to sing us to sleep. On the highest ridges, over which these old Yosemite ways passed, the silver fir (Abies magnifica) forms the bulk of ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... dreaming thus in the cool night air, and then, having slept for about three quarters of an hour, I opened my eyes without moving, awakened by an indescribably confused and strange sensation. At first I saw nothing, and then suddenly it appeared to me as if a page of the book, which had remained open on my table, turned over of its own accord. Not a breath of air had come in at my window, ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... heart is generous and delicate, and consequently he cannot desire to chain a wife to himself who tells him that during the five years of her married life she has not learned to love him. Oh, Fanny, how indescribably happy you render me by this disclosure. Then you will be free, your hands will not ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... marvellous collection of Japanese things. It is a most choice collection. There were some such funny things—a fiance and fiancee of Japan in costume were killing! and made-up monsters like life-sized mummies of the most hideous demons! Besides indescribably exquisite workmanship of all sorts. The pictures are not so charming a collection as those at Antwerp, but there are some grand ones. Tell Mother—Paul Potter's Bull is too indescribable! His nose, his hair, and a frog at his feet are wonderful! There is a portrait ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... with picturesque old junipers, their cinnamon-colored bark showing finely upon the neutral gray of the granite. These, with a few venturesome Dwarf Pines and Spruces, lean out over fissured ribs and tablets, or stand erect back in shadowy niches, in an indescribably wild and fearless manner. Moreover, the white-flowered Douglas spiraea and dwarf evergreen oak form graceful fringes along the narrower seams, wherever the slightest hold can be effected. Rock-ferns, too, are here, such ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... and strangely metallic, met his gaze. The rays of the sun beating down upon it were thrown back with an uncomfortable intensity; the substance of the island was a lustrous, copperlike metal. No soil softened the harshness of the surface; indescribably rugged and pitted was the two hundred-foot expanse. It reminded Parkinson of a bronze relief-map of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... but the strangers determined to make the best of it. The manner of this band of Indians was somewhat different from that of the others. They brought nothing for barter, and had an indescribably coarse and hardy style ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... door of the store behind him, advanced with the indescribably weary step of a station man when the day is warm and the boss absent, and seated ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... the new camp was one of discomfort and worry. No brigade or divisional staffs were present to assist and advise as to the new conditions. The source of supplies had to be ascertained, kitchens constructed, baggage sorted, and the lines, which were indescribably dirty, cleaned up. All ranks were tired with the previous day's long hours and badly needed a hot meal which, at first, could not be satisfactorily supplied. A few men strayed away to Heliopolis, where ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... large-boned boy, almost a rugged-looking boy, and it is only I, knowing him as I do, who can fathom the sensibilities housed in that husky young body. There is a misty broodiness in his eyes which leaves them indescribably lovely to me as I watch him in his moments of raptness. But that look doesn't last long, for Dinkie can be rough in play and at times rough in speech, and deep under the crust of character I imagine I see traces of his Scottish father in him. I watch with an eagle eye for any outcroppings of ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... overhanging bank. Blended with each discharge arose the wild yell, which they, in such a moment of novel excitement, felt it impossible to control, and this, answered from the Indians above and borne in echo almost to the American shore, had in it something indescribably startling. On the bank itself the effect was singularly picturesque. Here were to be seen the bright uniforms of the British officers, at the head of whom was the tall and martial figure of General Brock, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... cared for her, that I'd been swept off my feet, that passion had blinded me to the things I should have remembered." He let his hands fall between his knees. Knowing him as the man of reticence that he was, it seemed an indescribably tragic gesture. And it struck me as odd, the next moment, that he should be actually sobbing. "Oh, my dear, my dear, the one thing I was blind to was your bigness, was your goodness. The one thing I forgot was how true blue ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... vision are very much alike in color, they are nearly reddish-blue, purple or violet, according to the density of the ether, but when we view any object with the spiritual sight pertaining to the Desire World, it scintillates and coruscates in a thousand ever changing colors so indescribably beautiful that they can only be compared to living fire, and the writer therefore calls this grade of vision color sight, but when the spiritual vision of the World of Thought is the medium of perception, ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... richer. An orange flush, the first breaking of the beams faintly reflected from above, made the sky, before a deep and velvety black-blue, look like a gilt canopy based upon a rim of azure mist. The brilliancy waxed golden and more golden still; the blending of the colours became indescribably beautiful; and, lastly, the sun's upper limb rose in brightest saffron above the dimmed and spurious horizon of north-east cloud. The panorama below us emerged dimly and darkly from a torrent of haze, whose ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... twenty-seven followers, he was most kindly received by Mr. Edmund Gabriel, the British Commissioner for the suppression of the slave-trade there, and everything was done by him for his comfort. The sensation of lying on an English bed, after six months lying on the ground, was indescribably delightful. Mr. Gabriel was equally attentive to him during a long and distressing attack of fever and dysentery that prostrated him soon after his arrival at Loanda. In his Journal the warmest benedictions are poured on Mr. Gabriel, and blessings everlasting ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... nothing had happened. He ignored the whole episode and has never referred to it. It is a closed incident. The Sheik warned us that Ahmed had told him that any reference to it would mean the breaking off of all relations with us. But Ahmed himself had changed indescribably. All the lovable qualities that had made him so popular in Paris were gone, and he had become the cruel, merciless man he has been ever since. The only love left in him was given to his adopted father, whom he worshipped. Later I was allowed back ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... shows the perfect flower, but the bud possessed, if possible, even more exquisite charm. How clear and earnest was the gaze of her bright eyes! When she was gay they could shine like stars, and then her little red mouth had an indescribably mischievous expression, and in each cheek came one of the tiny dimples which still delight every one. Her nose was more delicate than it is now, and the slight curve which appears in the portrait, and which is far too prominent ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... something indescribably evil, malignant, and cruel, in those bleary eyes which thus sought Bob out, fastened themselves upon him, and seemed to devour him with their gaze. There was a hideous eagerness in her look. There was a horrible fascination about it,—such as the serpent ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... straight from the heart, I hardly needed to be told that he was from the South. He was from Mississippi. He was gaunt, yellow, malarial, and slovenly. He had 'teached' for twenty years, he said, but in spite of this there was about him something indescribably rural, something of the sod—not the dignity, the sturdiness of it, but rather of the pettiness, the sordidness of it. It showed in his dirty, flapping garments, his unlaced shoes, his stubble beard, in his indecent carelessness in expectorating the tobacco he was ceaselessly chewing. ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... be bald," grated the old man with a death's-head grin, indescribably ferocious, "but it's got brains enough in it to 'skunk' any man in this crowd three games out ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... packing-cases, and rubbish of all kinds, were strewn about, and absolutely hid the soil from view. Away on the hill beyond I spied the tiny house and hospital where I had spent six weary nights and days; and between these two buildings a patch of bare ground nearly half a mile square, indescribably filthy, had been the site of the white-hooded waggons and ragged tents of the laager itself. The road was of no interest, merely rolling veldt with a very few scattered farmhouses, apparently deserted; but one noticed that rough attempts ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... though the temper of my revolt was by no means steady. There were times when—to reverse an ancient saying—the muddy Jordan of London life seemed more to me than all the sparkling waters of Damascus. Humanity seemed indescribably majestic; and there were moments when I sincerely felt that I would not exchange the trampled causeways of the London streets for the greenest meadows that bordered Rotha or Derwentwater. There were days of early summer when London rose from her morning bath of mist in ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... spoke, Toby leapt the sun dial, leaving the ground as a bird leaves it, without effort or any sort of strain, and alighting again as a bird alights from a curving flight with absolute freedom and a natural adroitness of movement indescribably ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... forgotten that society had any general claims upon people who chance to belong to it, and the sudden recollection that if she went down to Naples, she could not go and see Gianluca, even under his father's and mother's roof, and talk with him if she pleased, was indescribably offensive to her over-grown sense of independence. Nor could she invite herself to Avellino to pay a visit to Gianluca's mother. She understood enough of the customs of the world with which she had really lived so little, to know that such ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... the highest part of the jail, at the northern extremity. Neither of these wards had beds, and the unfortunate inmates were obliged to take their rest on the oaken floor. The condition of the rooms was indescribably filthy and disgusting; nor were the habits of the occupants much more cleanly. In other respects, they were equally indecorous and offensive. "It is with no small concern," writes an anonymous historian of Newgate, "that I am obliged to observe that the women in every ward of this ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... before; the drops still hung on bush and tree; and as the dazzling radiance of the sun touched them, every drop also radiated light, prismatic, and scintillating an almost audibly tinkling joy. So indescribably wonderful and beautiful, yet so tender, seemed this scene—as of a mighty light informing the least atom of this tearful human existence—that the profoundest depths of Justin's nature opened ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... gifts had been granted him—an opportunity to save her from harm, perhaps from death. He had served her father. How greatly he could not tell, but if measured by the gratitude in her eyes it would have been infinite. He recalled that expression—blue, warm, soft, and indescribably strange with its unuttered hidden meaning. It was all-satisfying for him to realize that she had been compelled to give him a separate and distinct place in her mind. He must stand apart from all others she knew. It had been his fortune to preserve ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... purple, star-lit sky, street life in the central region of New York is indescribably exhilarating. From Union Square to Herald Square, and even further up, Broadway and many of the cross streets flash out at dusk into the most brilliant illumination. Theatres, restaurants, stores, are outlined in ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... trembled lest massacres should follow these Indian orgies, people in the East were shuddering over the particulars of a real catastrophe indescribably awful in nature. On a level some two hundred and seventy-five feet lower than a certain massive reservoir, lay the city of Johnstown, Pa. The last of May, 1889, heavy rains having fallen, the reservoir dam burst, letting a veritable mountain of water rush down upon the ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... circumstances. But she turned very pale. Even to her the word 'Christian' sounded like a bombshell in that room. The great traveller looked up astounded. He saw a tall woman in white with a beautiful head, a delicate face, a something indescribably noble and unusual in her whole look and attitude. She looked like a Quaker prophetess—like Dinah Morris in society—like—but his comparisons failed him. How did such a being come there? He was amazed; but he was a man of taste, and Madame de Netteville ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... countenance. And the absence of all movement in the figure, of all fire in the eye, were in harmony with a certain look of melancholy madness, and the deteriorating symptoms characteristic of senility, giving the face an indescribably ill-starred look which ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... interesting than the visit of any man, however famous, began to absorb the attention of our imprisoned hero at this time. He had never ceased to rack his brain with schemes looking to his escape. A life of captivity was indescribably wearisome to him. He not only taxed his own ingenuity in the effort to discover some feasible plan, but eagerly entered into the schemes of others. The result, however, so far as he was individually concerned, was by no means ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... shudders underfoot, the bowels of the mountain growl, and at any moment living ruin may leap sky-high into the moonlight, and tumble man and his merry-making in the dust. In the eyes of very young people, and very dull old ones, there is something indescribably reckless and desperate in such a picture. It seems not credible that respectable married people, with umbrellas, should find appetite for a bit of supper within quite a long distance of a fiery mountain; ordinary life begins to smell of high-handed debauch when ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... grace to man or beast; nevertheless its richness was undeniable. To the spendthrifts in the galleries the effect was indescribably attractive. They studied its elaboration, conjecturing how many gardens along the Bosphorus, and out in the Isles of the Princes, had been laid under contribution for the accomplishment of the splendor. Thus in the saddle, Demedes ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... and Senate, eager its I am to join you in the making of an American merchant marine commensurate with our commerce, the denouncement of our commercial treaties would involve us in a chaos of trade relationships and add indescribably to the confusion of the already disordered commercial world. Our power to do so is not disputed, but power and ships, without comity of relationship, will not give us the expanded trade which is inseparably ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... melody more enchanting. All languages seemed to be the same to her. She sang in French and Italian, German and English,—in tongues with which I was unfamiliar. It was in these Eastern harmonies that she was most successful. They were indescribably weird and thrilling, and she delivered them with a verve and sweetness which was amazing. I sat at one of the little tables with which the ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... absence of sentiment, her husband, the lamented Crown Prince Rudolph, was a composer of no mean power and seemed at times to pour forth his entire soul in the melodies which he coaxed from this instrument. Indeed he often sat at the piano for hours, playing, in a manner indescribably expressive and touching, airs improvised on the spur of the moment, which, while they remained impressed on the minds and ears of those present, would seem to fade at once from the memory of the prince himself. His was ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... weighing full twelve pounds, and I may say here that I wore them during the whole term of my imprisonment in this jail, or rather they wore me—wearing their way in time almost into the bone. I had been here a week now, and was well acquainted with the character of the place. It was indescribably filthy; no pretence was made of cleansing it. The prisoners were half fed, and, at that, the food was oftentimes so vile that starving men rejected it. The deputy who kept the jail was cruel and malignant, and took delight in torturing his prisoners. He ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... the front porch, on his comfort lay the tiny girl he loved. Mickey stopped and made a detailed inspection. Peaches leaned forward and reached toward him; her greeting was indescribably sweet. Mickey dropped the bundles and went into her arms; even in his joy he noted a new strength in her grip on him, an unusual clinging. He drew back ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... mariners then made an investigation of his pockets, the clerk standing by the while paralyzed with horror, his face the color of dough, his scalp creeping, and his hands and fingers twitching as though with the palsy. For there was something indescribably dreadful in the spectacle of those living hands searching into the dead's pockets, and he would freely have given a week's pay if he had never embarked upon the expedition for the recovery ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... was silent for a moment. Then, when he spoke, his voice was lower and there was an indescribably sad ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... harbour, Bushire is not unlike Cadiz. Its Moorish buildings, the whiteness of its houses and blueness of the sea, give it, on a fine day, a picturesque and taking appearance, speedily dissipated, how ever, on closer acquaintance; for Bushire is indescribably filthy. The streets are mere alleys seven or eight feet broad, knee-deep in dust or mud, and as irregular and puzzling to a stranger as the maze at ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... who had a daughter whose name was Stella. She was indescribably beautiful, but was so whimsical and hard to please that she drove her father to despair. There had been princes and kings who had sought her in marriage, but she had found defects in them all and would have none of them. She kept advancing in years, and her father began ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... as yourself, granny! Ha, ha, ha! ho, ho, ho! haw, haw, haw!" shouted a mirthful voice, while an indescribably comic face, half cat and half baby, appeared for a single glimpse above the burdock leaf behind which the spinsters were ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... Blenker habitation would probably be deserted, and he would be able, without indiscretion, to satisfy a vague curiosity concerning it. He was not sure that he wanted to see the Countess Olenska again; but ever since he had looked at her from the path above the bay he had wanted, irrationally and indescribably, to see the place she was living in, and to follow the movements of her imagined figure as he had watched the real one in the summer-house. The longing was with him day and night, an incessant undefinable craving, like the sudden whim of a sick man for food or drink once ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... of silence and inaction. From astern and a good way off sounded the notes of a bell. From the opposite direction came a low groan, indescribably mournful ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... I got two months' leave I invited myself there as a matter of course, fully expecting to stay most of my time with them, but I made an excuse to get away after a week. The place was dismal and unendurable, the whole life and atmosphere indescribably depressing." He looked round with an instinct of caution, leaned forward earnestly, and dropped his voice. "Mr. Carrados, it is my absolute conviction that Creake is only waiting for a ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... facts of the glaring fraud and corruption prevailing in every line of mercantile and financial business. Great and audacious as Gould's thefts were later, they could not be put on the same indescribably low plane as those committed during the Civil War by men most of whom succeeded in becoming noted for their fine respectability and "solid fortunes." So many momentous events were taking place during the Civil War, that amid all the preparations, the battles and excitement, those frauds ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... be," answered Julia: "my father hasn't been to sea for a good many years. My father," she added, with a diffidence indescribably mingled with a sense of distinction,—"my father's in State's Prison. What kind of ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... and swung his cane. The stick was tough and the blow was hard enough to send a man to earth, but the robber had heard Orme's approach, and looked up from his victim just in time. With a motion indescribably swift, he caught with one hand the descending cane and wrenched it from Orme's grasp. ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... heedless tumblings and scurrying of falling foliage. It fluttered in swift turns and somersaults and spinnings. There were weavings like the purposeful feints of boxers not yet come to battle. There were indescribably graceful swoops and loops and curving dashes like some preposterous dance ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... sprung back. "Lest we forget!" he said with a shrug. "Does Madame Cressida know we are to have the pleasure of your company for this voyage?" He spoke deliberate, grammatical English—he despised the American rendering of the language—but there was an indescribably foreign quality in his voice,—a something muted; and though he aspirated his "th's" with such conscientious thoroughness, there was always the thud of a "d" in them. Poppas stood before me in a short, tightly buttoned grey coat and ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... with him, and his voice, which had gained much in depth and richness, was indescribably sweet. It seemed as if Mr. Fairland never would tire of hearing the brother and sister sing together. His mills and everything else were forgotten, while he sat silently in his great chair with his eyes closed, listening hour after ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... indescribably simple, touching, and eloquent in the very positions of Hermanric and Antonina as they now sat together—the only members of their respective nations who were united in affection and peace—in the lonely farm-house. Both ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... poplars, standing like black, phantasmal guardians of the evil place, bent groaning before its fury. From the running waters of the moat, swollen by recent rains, came a gurgling sound that was indescribably wicked. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... 'same pen' may 'equal', but I think it is not in the power of human abilities to 'exceed' it. As to Lord Carlisle, I think he well deserves the Note Lord B. has put in; I am 'very much' pleased with it, and the little word 'Amen' at the end, gives a point 'indescribably good'. The whole of the conclusion is excellent, and the Postscript I think must entertain everybody except 'Jeffrey'. I hope the poor Bear is well; I wish you could make him understand that he is 'immortalized', for, if 'four-leg'd Bears' have any vanity, it would certainly delight him. Walter ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... end of the path, sprang a furry gray creature, supple, fluffy, indescribably formless and immense ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... of Scott. But as in this latter case, the superficiality and slightness of the work are deceptive. The character is given in a few strokes and without elaboration, but it is given inevitably and indescribably; the various appearances of Skarphedinn, different at different times, are all consistent with one another in the unity of imagination, and have no need of psychological analysis to ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... were awakened by the wild ravings of delirious agony,—those sounds so fearful in themselves, so awful in the silence and darkness of night, so indescribably awful in the solitude of our ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... knocking their heads against strings of weird votive-offerings, dried and shrivelled, that hung from the roof-beams. On either side were rude gods, some grotesquely carved, others no more than shapeless logs swathed in rotten and indescribably filthy matting. The air was mouldy and heavy with decay, while strings of fish-tails and of half-cleaned dog and crocodile skulls did not add to the wholesomeness ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... of the bungalow. The sweat was streaming down his forehead. His face was livid. His eyes, sinister and awful, were turned up like the eyes of a dead man. He was chewing at his cigarette with a ceaseless working of the jaws indescribably horrible ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... say nothing of Apollo—what magnificent forms the fellows had, and what indescribably hideous faces! They were tall, muscular, broad-shouldered, small waisted and ankled, round-muscled, black-polished—in a word, elegantly powerful. Many of them might have stood as models for Hercules. Like superfine cloth, they were of various shades; some ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... rising upon the scene, a phenomenon made necessary to dispel a little of the darkness that, under the pretence of light and justice, had been ingeniously thrown around the cause they were to decide. For a full half hour this rambling burlesque was continued, with a manner of delivery indescribably ludicrous, only now and then touching upon the cause on trial, and then only to fling ridicule upon some of the points previously argued ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... was so indescribably beautiful that I watched them sail across the valley with the gun idle in my hands. Not for worlds would I have turned one of those glorious birds into a crumpled mass of flesh and feathers. For centuries the barred tail plumes, which sometimes are six feet long, have been worn by Chinese ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... and lank, with a pair of curious, unforgettable eyes looking out from a swarthy face that told of Indian blood. They were round rather than the oblong shape to be expected in his type, and the iris a muddy blue-gray. The effect was indescribably queer, and was accentuated by the coal-black lashes and straight black brows which met above a rather thick nose. He had a low forehead, and when he grinned his teeth gleamed like ivory in his dark face. He boasted of Apache-Mexican blood "with ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... have taken any risk rather than make my escape by that way.... Oh, well!" he went on more coolly, "I suppose that to any one who didn't know her the idea of her being privy to her husband's murder might not seem so indescribably fatuous. Forgive the expression." He looked attentively at the burning end of his cigarette, studiously unconscious of the red flag that flew in Trent's eyes for an instant at his words and the tone ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley |
