"Unpronounceable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... go into training at once. By all means let's go to Mt Kenia and the other place with an unpronounceable name, and look for a white race that does not exist. ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... of about seventy miles falls into the Irish Sea. This renowned stream has been the theme of many a poet, and after expanding near its source into the beautiful Bala Lake, whose bewitching surroundings are nearly all described in polysyllabic and unpronounceable Welsh names, and are popular among artists and anglers, it flows through Edeirnim Vale, past Corwen. Here a pathway ascends to the eminence known as Glendower's Seat, with which tradition has closely knit the name of the Welsh hero, the close of whose marvellous career marked the termination ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... lithe, slender bodies. And they were both loved very much by everyone; and everyone said what a shame it was that he or she hadn't put his or her foot down hard and made Jimmy Blair stay at home instead of letting him go down into that unpronounceable Central American place and get killed in an opera bouffe revolution with which he had absolutely nothing to do except that he couldn't stand idly by and see women and little children shot. Still, it was such a blessing to Kate that she had little Kate to help her bear it ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... And think of the fuss they make about Homer, a blind old person who wrote a long rigmarole of a poem about battles, and wrote it so badly that to this day no one knows whether it's one complete poem, or a lot of odds-and-ends in the way of poetry, put together by a man with an unpronounceable Greek name. When I think of what Valentine accomplishes in comparison to Homer, and the little notice the reviewers take of him, except to make him low-spirited by telling him that he is shallow and frivolous, I begin to think that literature must ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... lovers all three, among the Western Isles, and whatever ship it was that carried us, her figurehead was always the Princess Sheila. Along the ruffled blue waters of the sounds and lochs that wind among the roots of unpronounceable mountains, and past the dark hills of Skye, and through the unnumbered flocks of craggy islets where the sea-birds nest, the spell of the sweet Highland maid drew us, and we were pilgrims to the Ultima Thule where she lived ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... found them camped in the last fringe of cottonwood that fronted the glacial slopes, their number augmented now by a native from a Russian village with an unpronounceable name, who, at the price of an extortionate bribe, had agreed to pilot them through. For three days they lay idle, the taut walls of their tent thrumming to an incessant fusillade of ice particles that whirled down ahead of the blast, while Emerson ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... favourite, and, with the exception of Mrs Pansey, everyone approved of her engagement. Behind a floral screen a band of musicians, who called themselves the Yellow Hungarians, and individually possessed the most unpronounceable names, played the last waltz, a smooth, swinging melody which made the younger guests long for a dance. In fact, the callow lieutenant boldly suggested that a waltz should be attempted, with himself ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... as far as appearance was concerned, of this man's life was the same as the outline of those of his ancestors and successors. They are all described in the same terms. The formula is the same. Enoch lived, Mahalaleel, and all the rest of the half- unpronounceable names, they lived, they begat their heirs, and sons and daughters, and then they died. And the same formula is used about this man. He walked with God, but it was while treading the common path of secular life that he ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... special to mark them. Captain Kirton had been conveyed abroad for the winter, and they had good news of him; and the countess-dowager was inflicting a visit upon one of her married daughters in Germany, the baroness with the unpronounceable name. ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... brought me one of my best friends and one of my happiest associations. It was on it that I met Mackenzie Murdoch. I'll always swear by Murdoch as the best violinist Scotland ever produced. Maybe Ysaye and some of the boys with the unpronounceable Russian names can play better than he. I'll no be saying as to that. But I know that he could win the tears from your een when he played the old Scots melodies; I know that his bow was dipped in magic before he drew it across the strings, and that he played ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... our shipwrecked friend had to retail his story to the woman, and then learned from her that the island was a very large one, with a name unpronounceable by English lips, that it was very thinly inhabited, that it consisted almost entirely of pasture land, and that "the laird" owned a large portion of it, including the little fishing ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... his shoulders. "I give it up!" he said smilingly. "Mademoiselle Gueldmar, if anything happens to me at this cascade with the name unpronounceable, you will again be my ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... at last we have a truly wild animal, never probably brought into subjection by man. The number of names he possesses shows how widely he has spread. The Tartars call him "Kulan," the Tibetans "Kiang," while the Mongolians give him the unpronounceable name of "Dschiggetai." He will not submit to any of them, but if caught and confined soon breaks away again to his old life, ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... men who had been added to the Team in every corner of the world. There was Ahmed Abd-el-Rahman, the Arab jeep-driver who had joined them in Basra. There was the wiry little Greek whom everybody called Alex Unpronounceable. There was an Italian, and two Chinese, and a cashiered French Air Force officer, and a Malay, and the son of an English earl who insisted that his name was Bertie Wooster. They had sworn themselves to secrecy, had heard MacLeod's story with a polylingual burst of pious or blasphemous ...
— The Mercenaries • Henry Beam Piper
... of the first volume,' she said, handing him the books, 'is, Songs of a Stranger. My friend the Bulgarian' (and she mentioned an unpronounceable name) 'contributed a preface. The second volume is entitled, New Songs by the Stranger. You will find ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... the Chief and Oldest Supreme God of Upper Egypt, worshipped at Thebes; the same as the OM or AUM of the Hindūs, whose name was unpronounceable, and who, like the BREHM of the latter People, was "The Being that was, and is, and is to come; the Great God, the Great Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent One, the Greatest in the Universe, the Lord;" whose ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... or Envoy; I incline to think the latter. The translation in the Catholic World speaks of Sir Arthur, but Mr. Scott's 'M. Arture' is much more vraisemblable. He probably had either a surname to be concealed or else unpronounceable to French lips. Scott must have had some further information of the after history of Mademoiselle de Bourke since he mentions her marriage, which could hardly have taken place when Pere Comelin's book was ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... edification he set it up thus,—Mynyddysllwyn. I almost turned my tongue into a corkscrew, trying to speak the word as he did, and I fairly gave up in despair. After that, I made it a rule, when I did not know how to spell some unpronounceable word, to huddle a number of consonants together in most admired disorder, and I was then usually nearer correctness than if I had orthographized ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... moment, his Majesty was in gracious converse with a lady on his right, a foreign princess, of an ancient, unpronounceable title,—a thin, colorless head and form, overloaded with immemorial family-jewels,—a mere frame of a woman, to hang brilliants upon. She was one shine and shiver of diamonds, from head to foot;—she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... Alost, Furnes, Tournai, were in the beginning of the invasion unpronounceable by most people, but little by little they have become familiar through newspaper reports of the barbarities said to have been practised upon the people by the invaders. Books giving the characteristics of these heroic people are eagerly sought. Unhappily these are few, and it would seem that ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... of the Pali ever since we landed. It is a cliff approached by a gorge, whence one of those unpronounceable and unspellable kings once drove his enemies headlong into the sea. We could not miss a scene so provocative of sensations as this, so several of us teachers and an army nurse or two packed ourselves into a wagonette for the ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... do, if it were possible for a peach to laugh. He could only say a horrible bon jour, and make the superfluous intimation that he could not speak French; and when Madame George gave him his choice of a dozen unpronounceable dishes, he looked so utterly blank and baffled that Suzette took the liberty ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... stage it may be well to explain how the name Mackenzie came to be pronounced and written as it now is. John, the son of this Kenneth, would be called in the original native Gaelic, "Ian Mac Choinnich," John, son of Kenneth. In that form it was unpronounceable to those unacquainted with the native tongue. The nearest approach the foreigner could get to its correct enunciation would be Mac Coinni or Mac Kenny, which ultimately came to be spelt Mac Kenzie, Z in those days having exactly the same value and sound as the letter ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... stylish in certain quarters—this "department" newly added just prior to my arrival. But before the beaders could begin work the goods had to be stamped, and before they could be stamped Mr. Rogers (he was middle-aged and a dear and an Italian and his name wasn't "Rogers," but some unpronounceable thing the Germans couldn't get, so it just naturally evolved into something that began with the same letter which they could pronounce) had to concoct a design. He worked in the cage at a raised end of the cutting table. He pricked ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... Father Francis Xavier more than many a more repulsive thing would have done. It seemed so utterly imbecile and babyish to him, he had got so far away from innocence and smiles and childhood himself, that the sight of them irritated him. The young Indian girl had a long and almost unpronounceable name. Pere Ignace had baptized her Marie, and the new name had gradually taken ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... talk about her. They went to bed to dream of her. They read Mary Lamb's stories from Shakespeare, and Hope Wayne was Ophelia, and Desdemona, and Imogen—above all others, she was Juliet. They read the "Arabian Nights," and she was all the Arabian Princesses with unpronounceable names. They read Miss Edgeworth—"Helen," "Belinda."—"Oh, thunder!" they cried, and dropped the book to ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... piano-forte at a low concert-room in Brussels. The men laid siege to her, of course, in all directions; but they found her insensible as adamant. One of these rejected gentlemen was a Russian; and he was the means of making her acquainted with a countrywoman of his, whose name is unpronounceable by English lips. Let us give her her title, and call her the baroness. The two women liked each other at their first introduction; and a new scene opened in Miss Gwilt's life. She became reader and companion to the baroness. Everything was right, everything was smooth on the surface. Everything ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... "I'd have liked a week here, but a day has been pretty good. We've seen enough 'Quarters' to make a 'whole,' and the Cathedral, and dozens of other churches, and we've driven along those lovely lakes with the unpronounceable names; and now I'm ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... great many trials repeated again and again with the utmost patience. That the sound-image has been correctly apprehended is evident from the certainty with which the child responds correctly in various cases by gestures to words of similar sound unpronounceable by him. Thus, he points by mistake once only to the mouth (Mund) instead of the moon (Mond), and points correctly to the ear (Ohr) and the clock (Uhr) when asked where these objects are. The acuteness of hearing indispensable for repeating the sounds is therefore ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer |
