"Indescribable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... almost speechless admiration, and without the slightest warning of treasure yet in store, the white beam was stabbed by a narrow, gleaming shaft of yellow sunlight. The glorious, radiant beauty of the picture presented is utterly indescribable, but it was of short duration, and in a few seconds the golden blade was withdrawn as suddenly as ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... shake and tremble, till strong men became seasick, and women clung to trees to escape falling, and cattle were thrown down off their feet. I beheld myself a young calf so thrown. A night of terror indescribable followed. The land was in motion like a canoe in a Kona gale. There was an infant crushed to death by its fond mother stepping upon it whilst fleeing her ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... that first year's battle with the unbroken passes are indescribable. Thousands of dead pack-horses marked the way. And the mountains once crossed and the waters reached new troubles arose. Boats had to be built for the long reach of navigation down the chain of lakes and the Yukon—many having brought the necessary ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... oppressed me in conducting our ordinary opera, was often interrupted by an indescribable enthusiastic feeling of happiness, when here and there, in the performance of nobler works, I became thoroughly conscious, in the midst of the representation, of the incomparable influence of dramatic-musical combinations—an influence ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... in her with wonder and admiration was the absence of weediness and flabbiness. Better known, she stirred in him, as a child might, an altogether indescribable sense of tenderness and absurdity. She stood out for him simply by the fact that, of all the young ladies of the Polytechnic, she was the only one he really knew—barring Maudie Hollis, and Maudie, though she was the proud beauty of the ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... her surprise was great to recognise Waunangee, who was even then looking at her with the same softened and eloquent expression, which had given her so much anxiety on a former occasion. The impression produced upon her was exactly what it had been then—indescribable—inexplicable ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... when the chess and checker enthusiasts get together. Games are rescued from the bottom of the trunk or box. Ponchos and rubber boots are now in popular favor. Thunder and lightning but add to the boys' enjoyment. What indescribable excitement there is in the shivers and shudders caused by an extra flash of lightning or a double fortissimo roll of thunder! There is also the delight, of playing in the puddles of water and wearing a bathing suit and enjoying ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... prolonged and shrill. His enormous jaws are widely opened at each expiration, his under-lip hangs over the chin, and the hairy ridge and scalp are contracted upon the brow, presenting an aspect of indescribable ferocity. ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... gave George the pre-arranged signal that all was well. Just then our partner appeared but with telltale face. It was flushed with chagrin and vexation, and there was gone from the contour of his body that indescribable port that tells, better than words, of confidence ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... on anything less practical than the movements of the solitary horseman below! Hills on hills piled about a verdant basin in whose depths nestled a scanty collection of houses, in number so small they could be told upon the fingers of the right hand, but which notwithstanding lent an indescribable aspect of comfort to this remote region ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... perceived a week, and is not scattered but abides, one living body of remembrance. The untravelled spirit of place—not to be pursued, for it never flies, but always to be discovered, never absent, without variation—lurks in the byways and rules over the towers, indestructible, an indescribable unity. It awaits us always in its ancient and eager freshness. It is sweet and nimble within its immemorial boundaries, but it never crosses them. Long white roads outside have mere suggestions of it and prophecies; ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... in real life was very pale, and had exquisitely chiselled features, and the ones I now looked upon were of the same cast. The height was also similar, and an indescribable atmosphere of refinement, purity, and quiet dignity, for which she had been remarkable; all this was present with this materialisation. More than this I cannot say, for no materialisation I have ever seen could be truthfully considered identical ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... clad in deep mourning, weeping over it; at each arm of the cross was suspended a garland of flowers; we were about to retire again immediately, from the fear of disturbing their melancholy devotions, when the concierge, with a brutality indescribable, rushed forward, and removing the garlands, threw them among the shrubs at a considerable distance. The friend who accompanied me, after searching, recovered one of the garlands, and with more gallantry perhaps than policy, immediately replaced it, and ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... his knowledge breathed from them. The impressions left on my mind were, above all others, two; first, the call to thorough diligence in preparation, if the preacher is to give his account with joy; and then, the indescribable solemnity and greatness of the work of a ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... emphatically by the presence of the corpse, and here was the country buzzing about him, and young ladies already proposing pleasure parties to surround his house at night. Well, that meant the gallows; and much he cared for that. What troubled him now was Julia's indescribable levity. That girl would scrape acquaintance with anybody; she had no reserve, none of the enamel of the lady. She was familiar with a brute like his landlord; she took an immediate interest (which she lacked even ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a periwinkle out of his shell. But even as I did so, I caught sight of Mashune's stalwart form advancing with his 'bangwan,' or broad stabbing assegai, raised above his head. In another quarter of a second I had fallen from the horn, and heard the blow of the spear, followed by the indescribable sound of steel shearing its way through flesh. I had fallen on my back, and, looking up, I saw that the gallant Mashune had driven the assegai a foot or more into the carcass of the buffalo, and ...
— Hunter Quatermain's Story • H. Rider Haggard
... indescribable, unconscious grace; with that supple, elastic undulation which would have been coquettish had it not been undeniably natural. Reaching the wall that enclosed the right side of the park, she opened a wicket ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... silence ensued, broken only by the heavily drawn breath of the sufferer. Two hours elapsed and there by the couch sat the motionless watcher, noting the indescribable but unmistakable change creeping on. The feeble, threadlike pulse fluttered irregularly, but the breathing became easy and low as a babe's, and occasionally a gentle sigh heaved the chest. She knew that the end ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... As the austerity of tragedy was not incompatible with the joyous views of the Greeks, so that romantic poetry whose origin I have been describing, can assume every tone, even that of the liveliest joy; but still it will always, in some indescribable way, bear traces of the source from which it originated. The feeling of the moderns is, upon the whole, more inward, their fancy more incorporeal, and their thoughts more contemplative. In nature, it is true, the boundaries of objects run more into one another, and things ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... be so impolite as to infer your age by asking that of your son,—the susdit George will come home late from play some afternoon, languid, pale, and disinclined for tea. He will indignantly repel the accusation of feeling ill, and there will lurk about his person an indescribable odor of stale cinnamon, which you will be at a loss to account for, but which his elder brother will recognize as the natural result of smoking "cinnamon cigars," wherewith certain wicked tobacconists of this city tempt curious youth. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... to each other without commingling, making the theory of them as a matter of fact, but not by a lying imagination and vain combinations of the mind; but in nowise separating them, since now the division into two has been destroyed on account of the indescribable and incomprehensible union; saying with the holy Athanasius, for there is now flesh and again the flesh of God the Word, now flesh animated and intelligent, and again the flesh of the animated and intelligent God the Word; but should under such expressions understand ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... know." She hung her head a little, and it gave her a still more winsome expression. There was an indescribable ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... bodies, wrapped in blankets or waterproof ground-sheets, are lifted over the parados, and carried back a convenient twenty yards or more. The desolation of that garden, choked with weeds and a wild growth of self-sown crops, is indescribable. It was wreckage-strewn, gaping with shell holes, billowing with innumerable graves, a waste land speechlessly pathetic. The poplar trees and willow hedges have been blasted and splintered by shell fire. Tommy calls ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... doffed its cap of vapour quite suddenly, producing an indescribable transformation scene which no fairy's wand could have accomplished in less time ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... communicating with several others that form a chain of many miles in extent. That swelling knoll that slopes so gently to the water would be such a pretty site for a cottage-orn, and the back-ground of hanging wood has an indescribable beauty in it, especially in the autumn, when the trees are one complete mass of variegated hues. He warms on the theme as he dilates on it, and sings as he turns to ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... procession. But within there was just one packed army, going eight abreast, of seminarians and clerics. These were just passing as the priest looked again, and close on their heels came the Court and the Cardinals; the latter an indescribable glory of scarlet, riding four abreast in broad hats and ample cloaks. But he gave scarcely more than a glance at these; for, full in sight for at least half a minute, advancing straight towards him down the roaring street, moved a canopy held by figures he could not clearly make out, and ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... knowledge that his confession would be inviolate as if locked in the heart of mountains. He knew her for a steadfast friend, and he t'elt that she was beautiful, not only in face and form, but in all those little indescribable mannerisms which stamp the individual. And this girl was here alone with him, so close that by stretching out his arms he might enfold her. She allowed him to come and go at will; her intimacy with him was almost like that of an unspoiled boy—yet different, so different that he thrilled at ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... which they always select in preference to a valley. The yellow tussocks were bending all one way, perfectly flat to the ground, and the shingle on the gravel walk outside rattled like hail against the low latticed windows. The uproar from the gale was indescribable, and the little fragile house swayed and shook as the furious gusts hurled themselves against it. Inside its shelter, the pictures were blowing out from the walls, until I expected them to be shaken off ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... mean time they turn his whims to the best account, particularly Laclos, who is a kind of subordinate Macchiavelli, capable of anything, profound, depraved, and long indulging his fondness for monstrous combinations; nobody ever so coolly delighted in indescribable compounds of human wickedness and debauchery. In politics, as in romance, his department is "Les Liaisons Dangereuses." Formerly he maneuvered as an amateur with prostitutes and ruffians in the fashionable world; now he maneuvers in earnest with the prostitutes and ruffians ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... most famous Gascon that has ever gasconaded on the earth; with that, a figure indescribable and assurance unbounded; and as to the ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... after considerable labour, in the hope of its leading to the northward, which it did for about one mile, and we then came to the same kind of loose ice as before. On the morning of the 9th July, we enjoyed the indescribable comfort of two or three hours' clear, dry weather, but had scarcely hung up our wet clothes, after halting at five A.M., when it again came on to rain; but, as everything was as wet as it could be, we left them out to take their chance. The rain ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... taking care of him, and of the other wounded, during the dreadful days that followed, during which the sufferings of the wounded from the intense heat, and the scarcity of medical and other supplies were almost incredible, and altogether indescribable. It was after this battle that the efficient aid, and the generous supplies afforded by the Sanitary Commission and its agents, were so conspicuous, and the results of this beneficent organization in the saving of life and suffering perhaps more distinctly seen than on ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... for you must know that unless it be accompanied with imagination, memory is cold and lifeless. The forms it brings before us must be inspired with beauty—that is, with affection or passion. All minds, even the dullest, remember the days of their youth; but all cannot bring back the indescribable brightness of that blessed season. They who would know what they once were, must not merely recollect, but they must imagine, the hills and valleys—if any such there were—in which their childhood played, the torrents, the waterfalls, the lakes, the heather, the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... entered the state parlour of Van Tassel's mansion. Not those of the bevy of buxom lasses, with their luxurious display of red and white; but the ample charms of a genuine Dutch country tea-table, in the sumptuous time of autumn. Such heaped-up platters of cakes of various and almost indescribable kinds, known only to experienced Dutch housewives! There was the doughty doughnut, the tender olykoek, and the crisp and crumbling cruller; sweet cakes and short cakes, ginger cakes and honey cakes, and the whole family of cakes. And then ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... and delight with which the touch of water affected us is indescribable; transported at our good fortune, we flung ourselves overboard and swam, the weather being calm and the sea smooth. Alas, how often is a change for the better no more than the beginning of disaster! We ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... harmonises with the mud—the peculiar pepper-and-salt which is warranted not to grow gray with age—the indescribable mixtures, which have evidently been compounded for the sake of economy, must ever be exiled from the wardrobe and legs of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... you saw them, they are perfect beauties, you would say. The oldest boy is as noble-looking a lad as ever you did see—Roman nose, raven hair, delightfully-carved mouth, and lips, and eyes, and eyelashes quite indescribable, so beautiful are they. The little girl is a perfect Venus; while the two younger children, Patrick and Eugene, are as if they came from the chisel of Powers, or some ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... There is an indescribable feeling of solitude in all houses in the environs of Mexico, a vastness, a desolation, such as I never before experienced in the most lonely dwellings in other countries. It is not sad—the sky is ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... truly call them, are of different forms, straight, spiral, and otherwise curved, and of varied length and colours. They are set in motion by the impulsion of thought. When we talked to the patient on a particular subject, one series of lines would be set in motion with indescribable rapidity; other topics would call into play other series of straight or curved lines. They can also be set in motion under ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... they howled about the tree, but after a few attempts to reach us they confined their efforts to terrorizing shrieks and screams, to horrid growling on the part of the great white apes, and the fearsome and indescribable ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... infirmary. At last they became desperate. A general and thorough investigation was instituted, and there, in a dark corner, under a hair mattress, and flat as a pancake, lay the poor puffin, alive!—but not with the life wherewith it had lived before it was shot—and emitting an odour that is indescribable, a description of which, therefore, would be quite unprofitable. The puffin was pitched overboard, and it was half insinuated that they ought to pitch the naturalist overboard ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... no one seems to have thought of putting Davy's suggestion to the test, and the surgeons of Europe had acknowledged with one accord that all hope of finding a means to render operations painless must be utterly abandoned—that the surgeon's knife must ever remain a synonym for slow and indescribable torture. By an odd coincidence it chanced that Sir Benjamin Brodie, the acknowledged leader of English surgeons, had publicly expressed this as his deliberate though regretted opinion at a time when the quest which he considered futile had already led to the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... work? Worship has always played an important part in the life of human beings. Whether man is in Babylonia worshipping the stars, or in Egypt at the Isis-Osiris shrine, or whether he ascends Mount Olympus with Homer, he is a worshipper. He may ascend to the indescribable, unthinkable realms with Plotinus or he may with twentieth century enlightenment claim allegiance to the God designated Father of all. Yet he worships. It will prove interesting to note the stimulation ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... drug-inspired dream or nightmare of an Oriental Dante. The fact that I have sacrificed my human appearance in the Great Cause cannot overcome the shrinking aversion that normal men would feel, if they could see me. I say only this, that my mutilation is indescribable. As the officer and gentleman I know you to be, you won't ask me to expose ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... of the principles of good breeding? I have seen numbers, who have been made sick, dizzy, and pale, by the breath of a smoker; and I have seen a person vomit out of a stage-coach, from the influence of that indescribable breath, which results from alcoholic liquor ...
— An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health • R. D. Mussey
... and then I heard an indescribable fluttering rush that told as plainly as sight could have done that a woman had answered her heart's call. Looking up involuntarily, I saw a sight that for a long moment held my eyes as if I had been fascinated. It was ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... countenance showed no emotion. Then the features broke into an expression of indescribable malice. With gestures of demoniac triumph he mocked the solemnity of the bier, and showered upon it every scornful indignity that ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... head, and though the pulpit was on the right, as I very well knew, I sought it on the left, and entangling myself among the benches I was completely lost. Unable to find either pulpit or door, I fell into an indescribable state of mind. At last I found the door and managed to get out of the church and run away as I had done before, quite determined never to enter the church ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... The indescribable yet almost overwhelming pathos of the tones affected Dr. Grey much as the tremolo-stop in some organ-overture in a dimly-lighted cathedral; and, as the singer seemed to pour her whole aching heart and wearied soul into the concluding "Ah! tutto-tutto fini!" he turned, and involuntarily ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... Brunswick, as emperor, and him, Duke Biron of Courland, as absolute regent of the empire during the minority of the emperor, who had now just reached the age of seven months. The joy of the magnates was indescribable; they sank into each other's arms with tears of joy. At this moment old enemies were reconciled; women who had long nourished a mutual hatred, now tenderly pressed each other's hands; tears of joy were trembling in eyes which had never before been known to weep; friendly smiles were seen on ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... cannot understand the grandeur of wild sports in a wild country. There is an indescribable feeling of supremacy in a man who understands his game thoroughly, when he stands upon some elevated point and gazes over the wild territory of savage beasts. He feels himself an invader upon the solitudes of nature. The very stillness of the scene is his delight. There ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... proceed to Abyssinia, and see if he could settle the dispute or misunderstanding that had arisen between Johannis the King and the Khedive. He proceeded on that very risky mission as he states in his letters; the journey was "indescribable in its solitary grandeur. These interminable deserts, and arid mountain passes fill the heart with far different thoughts than civilized lands do." With few attendants, he writes:—"We are still slowly ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... can hardly explain this appearance to himself, nor understand the noise and surging of the stream. The little bridge in the centre would be taken for the ruins of a fallen bridge, and the chasm is not seen from the shore, because the foaming waves overtop it. An indescribable fear would seize upon the traveller when he beheld the venturous guide ride into the stream, and was obliged to ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... brushed and combed back from his wide brow, and there was about him that indescribable 'something' which separated him from the throng of youths who collected in Bristol streets on Sundays, some on the College Green and many in Redcliffe Meadows, talking and laughing with the girls who were, like themselves, occupied in the week in shops and warehouses ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... This fiery height! Oh, my feet of fire! My burning feet of fire ...!" ran in far, beseeching accents of indescribable appeal this voice of anguish down the sky. Once it called—then silence through all the ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... countenance, and of very agreeable manners. His hair curled slightly over his forehead, and he had a dark and intelligent eye, full of vivacity and meaning. There was, besides, in the expression of his face, and in his air and address, a certain indescribable charm, which prepossessed every one strongly in his favor, and gave him, from his earliest years, a great personal ascendency over all who ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... a similar purpose, and left the room with myself. At the door he inquired if I could tell him in which of the neighbouring hotels M. Tieck resided, I showed him the house and paused a moment to watch his manner, which was entirely free from pretension, but which preserved an indescribable expression of reverence. "Was it possible to get a glimpse of the person of M. Tieck?" "I feared not; some one had told me that he was gone to a watering-place." "Could I tell him which was the window of his room?" This I was able to do, as he had been pointed out to me at it a ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... real sympathy of condolence in the greetings of all but the hard-a-weather master, the witty purser, and the obdurate first. The invalid was apparelled in an ancient roast-beef uniform coat, bottle-green from age; the waistcoat had flaps indicative of fifty years' antiquity, and the breeches were indescribable. He wore large blue-worsted stockings folded up outside above the knee, but carefully wrinkled and disordered over the calf of the leg, in order to conceal its healthy mass of muscle. Big as was the doctor, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... victors combined with the Richards' party, and chased the thoroughly demoralized Rawdonites, whose guns and pouches strewed the ground, to a desolate rocky spot beside a swamp, where felled trees lay in indescribable confusion, over which the fugitives scrambled in desperate haste for home. The lawyer caught sight of a figure that he knew, far up the rocky slope, preparing to leap down from a prostrate trunk resting on three or four others, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... or are distinguished only by peculiarities of the most glaring kind. But the dialogue is resplendent with wit and eloquence, which indeed are so abundant that the fool comes in for an ample share, and yet preserves a certain colloquial air, a certain indescribable ease of which Wycherley had given no example, and which Sheridan in vain attempted to imitate. The author, divided between pride and shame, pride at having written a good play, and shame at having done an ungentlemanlike thing, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... folks is universally excused as self-defense and secretly applauded as a public service. The born novel reader needs no guide, counsellor or friend. He is his own "master." He can with perfect safety and indescribable delight shut his eyes, reach out his hand, pull down any plum of a book and never make a mistake. Novel reading is the only one of the splendid occupations of life calling for no instruction or advice. All that is necessary is to bite the apple with the largest freedom possible ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... probably knows—was that of a blacksmith. As for external polish, or mere courtesy of manner, he never possessed more than a tolerably educated bear; although, in his gentler moods, there was a tenderness in his voice, eyes, mouth, in his gesture, and in every indescribable manifestation, which few men could resist and no woman. But he now looked stern and reproachful; and it was with that inauspicious meaning in his glance that Hollingsworth first met Zenobia's eyes, and began his influence upon ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... explication of the scene. The nature of his frenzy, as described by my uncle, was remembered. I, who had sought death, was now thrilled with horror because it was near. Death in this form, death from the hand of a brother, was thought upon with indescribable repugnance. ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... went close under them. On landing at the other side, we had to ascend a ladder about 200 feet high. We ordered a carriage at the Cataract Hotel, and drove to the whirlpool, four miles down the Rapids. This is an awful place, and indescribable. We then walked over Bath Island and Iris (or Goat) Island: here again is a splendid view. We saw Gull Island, where man has never been; and in the Rapids we saw the hull of the ship Detroit, fitted up in 1841 for the purpose of being sent over the Falls, ...
— Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic • George Moore
... the hours of twilight and night. The last fading light of the setting sun is reflected upon the waters of the Truckee River, in a silvery, rose-tinted hue, indescribable in its delicate beauty. There is a strange lady seated on the veranda of an imposing Colonial home overlooking the river. She is writing; sometimes she stops to gaze upon the glory of the sunset ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... easy-chairs, windows, and everything were draped in some old-fashioned kind of white cloth which always seemed to be waving and moving about of itself. The carpet was most singularly colored with dark reds and indescribable grays and browns, and the pattern, after a whole summer's study, could never be followed with one's eye. The paper was captured in a French prize somewhere some time in the last century, and part of the figure was shaggy, and therein little spiders found ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... However much his life was apart from the lives of other men, he did not therefore live alone. Was he not still of more value than many sparrows? And Kirsty's love for him had in it no shadow of despair. Her pain at such times was but the indescribable love-lack of mothers when their sons are far away, and they do not know what they are doing, what they are thinking; or when their daughters seem to have departed from them or ever the silver cord ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... be landed were in the boats. Israel had the tiller of the foremost one, waiting for his commander to enter, when just as Paul's foot was on the gangway, a sudden squall struck all three ships, dashing the boats against them, and causing indescribable confusion. The squall ended in a violent gale. Getting his men on board with all dispatch, Paul essayed his best to withstand the fury of the wind, but it blew adversely, and with redoubled power. ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... set out there myself at twelve o'clock (nothing would induce Fustov to go with me, he only begged me to give him an exact account of everything), when round the corner of the street their house glared at me in the distance with a yellowish blur from the coffin candles at one of the windows, an indescribable panic made me hold my breath, and I would gladly have turned back.... I mastered myself, however, and went into the passage. It smelt of incense and wax; the pink cover of the coffin, edged with silver lace, stood ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... how can you," said Miss Peppy, who talked with great volubility, and who never for a moment ceased to bustle about the room in a series of indescribable, as well as unaccountable, not to say unnecessary, preparations for the morning meal, which had already been prepared to perfection by Mrs Niven; "you surely don't forget—things do happen so surprisingly at times—really, you know, I can ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... idle; on the little finger of her left hand twinkled a brilliant garnet ring, set with diamonds. Her face was colorless, the forehead extremely low, the nose and mouth finely cut, the eyes of heavenly blue. Although youth had gone, she was beautiful, with an indescribable air of individuality. She influenced all who were near her; her atmosphere enveloped them. She was not aware of it, being too indifferent to the world to observe what effect she had in it, and only realized ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... two drums, or rather of two hollow trunks, by a hundred and five performers, supported by a vocal choir. Cook reciprocated these demonstrations by putting his soldiers through their artillery exercises, and letting off fireworks, which produced indescribable astonishment in the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... in this state of indescribable horror, I saw the light gradually fade away from the tops of the mountains, giving the scene around me a dim and spectral ghastliness, which, to those who were never in such a situation, ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... cord that served as its bowstring. And there was a shaft whose splendour looked like that of the sun or of the fire that appears at the end of the Yuga. Verily, that shaft was the excellent Pasupata that mighty and terrible weapon, which is without a second, indescribable for its power, and capable of striking every creature with fear. Of vast proportions, it seemed to constantly vomit sparks of fire. Possessed of one foot, of large teeth, and a thousand heads and thousand Stomachs, it has a thousand ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Middle-age caps (such as are called, in heraldry, caps of maintenance), Spanish nets, and striped worsted nightcaps. Fancy all the jackets you have ever seen, and you have before you, as well as pen can describe, the costumes of these indescribable Frenchmen. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and finally rose and got off an impromptu piece of doggerel with exactly ten verses, and each child's name and some peculiarity brought out in a way to convulse even mammas and the maids, was as indescribable as delightful. I am not sure that he did not enjoy it more than any of the grand entertainments that he had been asked to; and as for the children, they remember it to this day, although they are on the verge of young-ladyhood ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... valley. Under the mustering shadows, the pallid river winds slowly to the sea. The gulf, stretching limitless, shines like a slab of salt strangely bespangled. In this atmosphere without mists, the sharp outlines of the coast, the dense movelessness of the aspect, has an indescribable effect. It is like a hitherto unknown and virginal revelation of the earth. Then the stars bloom out, with a flame, an hallucinating palpability. Charles's Wain, burning low on the gorges of the Edough, seems like a golden waggon ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... It was past twelve. The well of my eloquence was running drier and drier, and yet no sound outside! I wondered how long they would stand it and how long I could stand it. At 12.15 I began my peroration. Hardly had I done so, when one of the young men started in a gentle voice an utterly indescribable ditty. One by one they took it up, till the rising tide of voices drowned my fervent periods. Perforce I stopped. They were all on their feet now. Did they mean to break up? In despair at the idea I lifted up my voice, loud ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... bottom of her belly. I was several times in the same room with her, and was permitted the same liberties, but no others. I lent her Aristotle, which I had borrowed, and one day recollect my prick stiffening, and a strange overwhelming, utterly indescribable feeling coming over me, of my desire to say to her "cunt," and to make her feel me, and at the same time a fear and a dread overtook me, that my cock was not like other cocks, and that she might laugh at me. After that, I used to pull ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... forest of candelabra shone like a conflagration kept within bounds; when the courtiers seemed to sink into the carpets and divans and silken and down coverlets; when the sweet-smelling incense rose from the golden censers and intoxicated the brain; when a hundred servants made ready the banquet of indescribable luxury, and carried it in silver dishes, alabaster bowls, and crystal goblets; when youths and maidens, with arms entwined, crowned each other with wreaths of roses; when the fanfares sounded, and the cymbals clashed, and song gushed from maidens' ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... dreadful dreams became continually more appalling: single scenes, or passages in these dreams, were sufficient to compose the whole course of mighty tragedies, the impression from which was so profound as to stretch far into his waking hours. Amongst other phantasmata more shocking and indescribable, his dreams constantly represented to him the forms of murderers advancing to his bedside; and so agitated was he by the awful trains of phantoms that swept past him nightly, that in the first confusion of awaking ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... massive character of her features, her aggressive jaw and evasive blue eyes. But as she grew interested and earnest in conversation, a great light flashed over or out of her face, till it seemed transfigured, while the sweetness of her rare smile was something quite indescribable. But she seemed to me to the last lofty and cold. I felt that her head was among the stars—the stars of a wintry night." Another American, Miss Kate Field, in writing of the English authors to be seen in Florence half a dozen years after George ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... royal, indeed, in its type of queenly beauty. The wine-colored stipes of the uncoiling fronds shooting up in early spring, lifting gracefully their pink pinnae and pretty panicles of bright green spore cases, throw an indescribable charm over the meadows and clothe even the wet, stagnant swamps with beauty nor is the attraction less when the showy fronds expand in summer and the green sporangia are turned to brown. The stout rootstocks are often erect, rising several inches to a foot above the ground, ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... shocked, for he proceeded with some haste to explain to me how what he had said was true. 'Whatever belongs to God is essential to God,' he said. 'He is one pure, clean essence of being, to use our poor words to describe the indescribable. Nothing hangs about him that does not belong to him,—that he could part with and be nothing the worse. Still less is there any thing he could part with and be the worse. Whatever belongs to him is of his own kind, is part of himself, so ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... me that it was you, my dearest!" she exclaimed, and her glorious blue eyes gazed upon him with an indescribable ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... country because its beauty is as that of a dream. Sometimes it is black, wildly inhospitable and dispiriting - and suddenly, in calm, mild weather, the entire country with its trees, canals, cities and inhabitants sparkles in an indescribable tender radiance, enhancing everything with a deep mysterious meaning impossible to explain or describe more fully, and resembling the peculiar beauty of dreams. One must have seen my little city from the sea on a still, clear September eve, when the sun goes to bide behind ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... somber majesty of these giant groups, and the varieties of the undulating ground on which they stood, there was little that could be deemed attractive in the place. A certain air of neglect and decay, and an indescribable gloom and melancholy, hung over it. In darkness, it seemed darker than any other tract; when the moonlight fell upon its glades and hollows, they looked spectral and awful, with a sort of churchyard loneliness; and even when the blush of the morning kissed its broad woodlands, ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... beyond my line of vision. The Martinez heeled over, sharply, and there was a crashing and rending of timber. I was thrown flat on the wet deck, and before I could scramble to my feet I heard the scream of the women. This it was, I am certain,—the most indescribable of blood-curdling sounds,—that threw me into a panic. I remembered the life-preservers stored in the cabin, but was met at the door and swept backward by a wild rush of men and women. What happened in the next few minutes I do not recollect, ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... seldom to be deceived respecting the good or evil tendency of any measure which Napoleon engaged in; and I remember she told me that when informed of the intention of the Emperor to bestow the throne of Spain on Joseph, she was seized with a feeling of indescribable alarm. It would be difficult to define that instinctive feeling which leads us to foresee the future; but it is a fact that Josephine was endowed with this faculty in a more perfect decree than any other person ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... gazed at her with an exalted look. Then drawing himself to his full height, he said, with an exaggerated and indescribable gesture, "Go, my child, go. Tell your father that you have been alone and unprotected in the abode of poverty and suffering, but—that it was in the presence of ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... dead, so many years had elapsed since my mother's flight. I had thought of him as a fabulous being. I dreamed not of encountering him, and if I had, I should have felt secure, for how could he recognize me? My father! cold and sick I turned away, shivering with indescribable apprehension. He had destroyed my mother,—he had come to destroy me. That secret note,—that note which I was to conceal, or meet so awful a penalty, seemed to scorch the bosom that throbbed wildly against ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... unusual.—Ver. 309. 'Nescio quid.' This very indefinite phrase is repeatedly used by Ovid; and in such cases, it expresses either actual doubt or uncertainty, as in the present instance; or it is used to denote something remarkable or indescribable, or to show that a thing ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... fell upon my ear with peculiar and indescribable charm, like the gentle murmur of a brook stealing forth in the midst of roses, or the soft sweet accent of an angel's whisper in the bright joyous dream of sleeping innocence. Duluth! 'T was the name for which my soul had panted for years, ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... Southern speech, indescribable and impossible in cold type. The softening of the consonants, the slipping away of the terminals, the slurring of vowels, and all in that low, musical voice born out side of the roar and crash of city streets and crowded drawing-rooms with each ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and wagon of the flying division disappeared over the hill toward health and home, a despairing wail went up from the doomed 350 left in this condition of indescribable horror. 'We are abandoned to die!' they cried; 'we are deserted by our own comrades in the hour of danger and left ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... father's teaching and influence were not forgotten. Generations of Quaker influence and blood were not without effect. War was born in hell. It was an act of savagery, and not of Christian nations. He pictured the awful carnage, the indescribable butchery, the untold horror which were entailed. He saw hordes of men fighting like devils; realised the lust for blood which was ever the concomitant of war. Besides, they settled nothing. Wars always bred wars, one always sowed ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... vice and infamy on their foreheads? "Drunkards and tipplers," he adds, "have been searched out with such unerring certainty as to show that the arrows of death have not been dealt out with indiscrimination. An indescribable terror has spread through the ranks of this class of beings. They see the bolts of destruction aimed at their heads, and every one calls himself a victim. There seems to be a natural affinity between cholera and ardent spirit." What, then, in days of exposure to this ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... the Boarding House. Mrs. Considine, herself compelled to live in these homes for the homeless, gladly accepted the proposal, came down, interviewed her charge, who happened then to be in a mood of meekness indescribable, and went away, so to speak, with her contract in her pocket. It was part of the programme that Mrs. Considine should tactfully carry on Liosha's education, which had been arrested at the age of twelve, instil into her a sense of Western decorum, ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... of the setting sun fell full upon her face it seemed almost transparent, and even the unobserving must have perceived that some deep experience of the sadness of life had added to her character an indescribable charm. ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... than a cannon-shot would shatter, guards the entrance to this passage, which is the only accessible entrance to the place. Following it along for perhaps thirty yards, we emerge upon a scene of almost indescribable squalor—a scene that instantly suggests an overcrowded "rookery" in the tenement-house slums of New York. The place is simply swarming with people, who, like rabbits in an old warren, seem to be moving about among the tumble-down mud huts, anywhere ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... entered an extraordinary chamber. The sides were covered with strange diagrams, grotesque drawings, lettered inscriptions. Some were sketched rudely upon the plastering with colored chalk; others were designed upon paper, and pasted on the wall. In the centre of the room sat an indescribable human figure, with its face buried in its hands. It wore an anomalous garment, slashed with various colors, like a harlequin's coat. Upon one shoulder was sewed the semblance of a door cut out of blue cloth; on the other, a crescent cut out of green. Upon the head was set a tinsel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... and confusion came, he drove the hook into poor old Mole's wig, while he rubbed it dexterously with phosphorus, and then with a jerk he hauled it up to the ceiling, where he set it dancing about, to the indescribable ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... constituted and governed by the Almighty, and behold the real order and harmony therein established. The ideal creations of the poet and the philosopher sink into perfect insignificance beside the actual creation of God. Where clouds and darkness once appeared the most impenetrable, there scenes of indescribable magnificence and beauty are now beheld with inexpressible delight; the stupendous cloud of evil no longer hangs overhead, but rolls beneath us, while the eternal Reason from above permeates its gloom, and irradiates its depths. We ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... magnificence. He arranged great celebrations, in which the people were entertained with an endless succession of games, spectacles, and public feasts. When his daughter Julia, Pompey's wife, died, he celebrated her funeral with indescribable splendor. He distributed corn in immense quantities among the people, and he sent a great many captives home, to be trained as gladiators to fight in the theatres for their amusement. In many cases, too, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Dolores; oh, see how handsome he is!" (Valga me, Dios, que lindo es, pobrecito!)And the way the young lady gazed was a revelation to me. The fire of her limpid black eyes struck me as a ray of glorious light. An indescribable thrill, never before known, rose in my breast and she held me enthralled under a spell which I had not the least desire to break. And they said that it was I who had the evil eye! To say that these people were lacking in the virtues and accomplishments of modern ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... motioned to us to enter. Never shall I forget the sight that greeted my eyes. Upon the bed lay a childish form, with a small, refined face, the pallor of which was intensified by contrast with the large dark eyes, that now had a half startled, expectant, indescribable expression. The sufferer had evidently reached the crisis of a malarial fever; reason had returned unclouded; but from that strange, bright look, I felt that there was ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... way for several weeks, always hoping some good luck would happen. At last, one day, they saw a ship a few miles from the shore. They all ran to the top of a rock, and shouted and waved their hats. Soon, to their indescribable joy, they saw a boat approaching the shore. They did not wait for it to reach the land, but being all good swimmers, with one accord plunged into the sea and swam to the boat. The sailors in the ...
— The Last of the Huggermuggers • Christopher Pierce Cranch
... words, and with a grin upon his features altogether indescribable, but which seemed to be compounded of every monstrous grimace of which men or monkeys are capable, the dwarf slowly retreated and ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... of those prophets whose model he had proclaimed himself to be. Jesus and John were in the second or third—he was not quite sure which—Moses was in the sixth, while Abraham alone had the supreme distinction of residing in the Seventh Heaven. There, at the apex of indescribable glory, Mohammed had entered the awful presence of his Maker, Who, after some chit-chat, charged him to see that all Moslems should hereafter prostrate themselves in prayer toward the Temple of Solomon five times a day. The truth of this narrative rests upon two solid facts: from that day ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... who was preferred before all others in the sight of the whole city. In truth, there was about Ellen a majesty and nobility of youth and innocence and beauty which overawed. The other girls of the class were as young and as pretty, but none of them had that indescribable quality which seemed to raise her above them all. Ellen still kept her blond fairness, but there was nothing of the doll-like which often characterizes the blond type. Although she was small, Ellen's color had the firmness and ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... said, but undistinguishable by mortal ear; and after gazing with an expression of indescribable anxiety in the scared face of his awe-struck listener, the wearied eyes slowly reclosed—the deep silence flowed past; then the convulsive shudder came again, ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... entire system of the universe and power producing all creation, true Son of a true Father, the invisible of the invisible and incorruptible of the incorruptible, the immortal of the immortal, the eternal of the eternal"). The begetting is an indescribable act which can only be represented by inadequate images: it is no emanation—the expression [Greek: probole] is not found, so far as I know[740]—but is rather to be designated as an act of the will arising from an inner ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... a brief instant no more to him that his embrace enfolded her than if she had been the veriest stranger. A hideous din of yells, of crashing wood and rending iron, of shivering glass, of escaping steam, of indescribable sounds which had no resemblance to anything which he had ever heard or dreamed of, and which seemed to beat upon his ears and his brain like blows of bludgeons wielded by the hands of infuriate giants. The end of the car before him ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... the passion which her ingenuous story about the dredging-machine was destined to arouse. When Mr. Roscorla read that simple narrative, he first stared with astonishment as though she were making some foolish joke. Directly he saw she was serious, however, his rage and mortification were indescribable. Here was this young man, not content with hanging about the girl so that neighbors talked, but actually imposing on her credulity, and making a jest of that engaged ring which ought to have been sacred to her. Mr. Roscorla at once saw through the whole affair—the trip to Plymouth, the purchasing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... have been a Goth, and worn the horned bull-pate helmet of Alaric's warriors; or stood at the prow of one of the swift craft of the Vikings. His eyes, which have been variously described, were, it seemed to me, of an indescribable depth of the bluish moss-agate, with a capacity of pupil dilation that in certain lights had the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... godfather, are hovering over the crib like twin guardian angels. And Mildred sits en grande tenue on her cricket, in a speechless trance of delight, and nurse rustles about in her new silk gown and white lace cap with an air of importance and self-complacency almost indescribable. The domestic picture only wants papa and mamma ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... you a few of its items: delicious coffee, "white bread and brown," or rather black, and unlimited butter, make up our breakfast. Dinner always commences with a soup, usually made from meat, sometimes from herbs, lemon, sweet fruit, or other ingredients utterly indescribable. Meat, to be fit for a German table, must be carefully pared of every vestige of fat; if boiled it is underdone, unless expressly devoted to the soup, when the juiceless shreds that remain are served up with plums or prepared vegetables; if it be baked (roasting is almost unknown) it ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... taken Vooda's measure accurately. He knew the Constable to have a persuasive tongue, to be honest, loyal, and discreet, and, above all, to possess that nameless and almost indescribable quality of imparting trustfulness in those with ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... they could hear one another's teeth chatter. They were too frightened to call for help; they could only lie still, hoping and praying it would not come nearer to them. The sufferings of these two ladies were indescribable, for the ghost remained in their room all night, moving restlessly about until daybreak. It was not until some days later, when other people in the house had experienced the phenomenon, that they were told the story of the notorious ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... world cannot grasp all its features of wall and butte and canyon, of winding ridge and curving ravine, of fell precipice and rocky gorge, in a week, a month, a year, or a lifetime. Hence words can but suggest; nothing can describe the indescribable; nothing can picture what no man ever has seen ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... the air was warmed; only, Lavienne strewed straw on the wet floor. By long use the benches were as polished as varnished mahogany; at the height of a man's shoulders the wall had a coat of dark, indescribable color, given to it by the rags and tattered clothes of these poor creatures. The poor wretches loved Popinot so well that when they assembled before his door was opened, before daybreak on a winter's morning, the women warming themselves with their foot-brasiers, the men swinging their ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... An indescribable anxiety oppressed the Dreux-Soubise and their guests. There was something in the tone and attitude of Floriani—something more than the chevalier's assurance which, from the beginning, had so annoyed the count. There was a touch of irony, that seemed rather hostile than sympathetic. But the count ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... of the Covenanting imagination. But John Graham was more human: he might not see visions, and there never came into his face that light of the other world which she had seen on Pollock's, but he knew when a woman was walking by his side, and his eyes caressed her. His voice never had that indescribable accent of eternity which thrilled Henry Pollock's hearers, and was to them as a message from God, but Graham's speech could turn from grave and courteous mockery, which was very taking in its way, to a gentle deference and respectful appeal, which, ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... the poetry is not great: it does not awaken the "transcendental feeling."[22] The moments when this condition is most fully attained by Wordsworth occur when, by sheer force of poetic imagination combined with spiritual insight, in some mysterious and indescribable way, he flashes upon us a sensation of boundless infinity. Herein consists the peculiar magic of such a poem as Stepping Westward; and there is a touch of the same feeling ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... band played 'Come back to Erin,' and the scene was indescribable. Nothing could have induced me to witness it had I realised what it was to be, for I wept at Holyrood when I heard the plaintive strains of 'Bonnie Charlie's noo Awa' floating up to the Gallery of Kings from the palace courtyard, ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... gloriously glad concert, hundreds or thousands of exulting voices with sweet gurgling baumpalees mingled with chippy vibrant and exploding globules of musical notes, making a most enthusiastic, indescribable joy-song, a combination unlike anything to be heard elsewhere in the bird kingdom; something like bagpipes, flutes, violins, pianos, and human-like voices all bursting and bubbling at once. Then suddenly some one of the joyful congregation shouts Chirr! Chirr! and ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... lost in the flood of melody was of two notes, the second a fifth higher than the first, with a "grace-note," very low indeed, before each one. The other beginning was also two notes, the second at least a fifth lower than the first, with an indescribable jerk between, and uttered so softly that if I had been a little further away I could not have heard it. It ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... set the pines whispering for a moment; then all was silent. With eyes half closed, Darrell raised the violin and, drawing the bow softly across the strings, began one of his own improvisos, the exquisite, piercing sweetness of the first notes swelling with an indescribable pathos until Kate could scarcely restrain a cry of pain. Higher and higher they soared, until above the clouds they poised lightly for an instant, then descended in a flood of liquid harmonies which alternately rose and ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... The feeling of joy which I experienced on the occasion of this reunion with my own kith and kin—people who had stood shoulder to shoulder with me in the desperate struggles of the 1896-97 revolution—is simply indescribable. Words fail to express my feelings—joy mingled with sadness and strong determination to accomplish the salvation, the emancipation, of my beloved countrymen. Hardly had I set foot in the Naval Headquarters at Cavite, at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, than I availed ...
— True Version of the Philippine Revolution • Don Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy
... costume-colors of Martinique-always relieved by brilliant yellow stripings or checkerings, except in the special violet dresses worn on certain religious occasions—have an indescribable luminosity,—a wonderful power of bringing out the fine warm tints of this tropical flesh. Such are the hues of those rich costumes Nature gives to her nearest of kin and her dearest,—her honey-lovers—her ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... perspiring squad scrambled down the bluff, and made for the cool waters of Lake Conowingo, a mysterious silence, like a mighty wave, literally surged toward them. Camp Bannister seemed deserted, the sun was still shining, the birds sang as cheerily as ever, but instinctively the collegians felt an indescribable loneliness, a sense ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... day which it had never before entered into the brain of the wildest scientist to conceive. The hissing of the hot shower and the vigour of the cold shock were only equalled by the unearthly yelling of the foe, whose miraculous bounds and plunges formed a scene that is altogether indescribable. ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... to Jove that day according to his vow, and a long line of wagons loaded down and groaning under the weight of the vast spoil; the Roman army, horse and foot, the Senate and the people, a million, perhaps, all following the indescribable magnificence of the great triumph, along the Sacred Way, that was yellow with fresh strewn sand and sweet ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... without the slightest compunction. And when it was finished he idled the time away smoking one of Iredale's best cigars with the utmost enjoyment. He watched the shadows grow and deepen. He waited until the blue vault of the sky had changed its hue to the indescribable shadow which follows in the wake of the daylight, and the sparkling diamonds of night shone out upon its surface; then he called for his horse and set out ostensibly ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... rather reclining on a low ottoman close by, something that caused her to start as if the gallant officer was not altogether unknown to her, but her memory would not at the moment serve her, yet a feeling of mistrust, a sort of almost indescribable sensation of disquietude came over her as she listened to the polite nothings that issued from his lips; but fearing to attract observation she quietly withdrew, and entering the upper end of the ball room summoned ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... wound upon his body; but before he could strike again, and before either of the others could strike at all, Caesar stretched the three miscreants at his feet with as many blows of his powerful fist. By this time the Senate was in an indescribable uproar; the throng of citizens is the lobbies had blockaded the doors in their frantic efforts to escape from the building, the sergeant-at-arms and his assistants were struggling with the assassins, venerable senators had cast aside their encumbering robes, and were leaping over benches ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he struggled with his misery. Then, to his indescribable joy, there came a message ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... others followed with a similar result. Then came Mercy, the housemaid, and as her trembling fingers poured the liquid forth, behold the powder changed and turned to black! The commotion was indescribable, and Mercy was about to have a nervous fit when Dr. Rutherford, fixing his eyes on her, said in a tone of command, "Be quiet—be perfectly quiet, and in two hours I will destroy the spell. Go over ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... The sun dance is performed by young warriors who dance, at intervals of five minutes, for several days. They hop on one foot and then on the other, keeping time to the drum, and making indescribable gestures, each having a small whistle in his mouth, with his face turned towards the sun. The singing and other music is performed by the medicine men. The drum used is a raw hide stretched over a keg, on which a regular beating of time is made with a short stick with a head to it. Women ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... moment she saw the spider herself—very near, under a blackberry leaf. At sight of the great monster, silent and serious, crouching there as if ready to pounce, Maya's horror was indescribable. The wicked shining eyes were fastened on the little bee ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... water, sparkling with golden fishes, in the centre of which is a fairy-like island, teeming with flowers of numerous kinds. The general effect of the view was like that of enchantment, or like one of those indescribable scenes that sometimes visit us in dreams, the beauty of which surpasses reality. But my time will not allow me to indulge very largely in detail. From the "Generaliffe" we proceeded to several of the churches, and afterward to an extensive mad-house. We were not a ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... of food, and the revellers, with their flushed faces and feverish eyes and loud laughter. Above all the tumult was the voice of the orchestra, calling, calling, like the storm wind upon the mountains; the music was wild and chaotic, and produced an indescribable sense of pain and confusion. When one realized that this same thing was going on in thousands of places in this district it seemed that here was a flood of dissipation that out-rivalled ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... forgotten almost as soon as done, was in an exceedingly short time known to every cadet throughout the camp, and I had the indescribable pleasure, some days after, of knowing that by it I had been raised many degrees in the estimation of the corps. Nor did this knowledge remain in camp. It was spread all over the Point. The act was talked of and praised by the cadets wherever ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... for any wingless creature: thus the strange birds which haunt the wild recesses of the rocks do so in perfect security, and their varied cries, along with the roar of the water, are the only sounds that issue from below. The mysterious gloom is indescribable, and the look down into the depths fills one with awe; and yet this singular view is obtained from the very town itself, from the courts and windows ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... am never to see him any more; I am never to speak of him again"—those were the words I repeated to myself, with indescribable terror and confusion, the moment I was alone. There was something unspeakably horrible to my young mind in this mystery which I was commanded always to respect, and which, so far as I then knew, I could never hope to see revealed. ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... saddle-bags, were tied to posts. On the sand were numbers of animals for sale—oxen, cows, calves, goats, kids, great black hogs covered with bristles like wild boars, and tiny pigs which, when bought, were popped into bags with their heads and the two front feet peeping out. The noise was indescribable. Cattle lowed, pigs squealed and grunted, men shouted, children cried, and musicians sang and rattled tambourines. Beggars of all descriptions, the blind, the halt, and the maimed were there, clamoring for alms, and calling attention ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... in this little speech, but it was spoken in a low, sweet voice; and Rachel looked down on the ferns before her feet, as they walked on side by side, not with a smile, but with a blush, and that beautiful look of gratification so becoming and indescribable. Happy that moment—that enchanted moment of oblivion and illusion! But the fitful evening breeze came up through Redman's Dell, with a gentle sweep over the autumnal foliage. Sudden as a sigh, and cold; in her ear it sounded like a whisper or a shudder, and she lifted up her ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... cum privilegio dunder-headed. I make no pretensions to understand her, but as I am neither her lover nor her husband it does not matter. She says nothing diabolical or eerie or fantastic or feline or pre-Adamite or uncanny or spiritual; and yet she is, in a queer, indescribable ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... in an avenue of dark trees, the end of which was far off. Thither she went walking, the only living thing, crossing strange shadows from the moon. At the end of it she was in a place of tombs. Terror and a dismay indescribable seized her; she turned and fled back to the company of her kind. But for a long time she sought the house in vain; she could not reach it; the avenue seemed interminable to her feet returning. At last she was again upon the ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... and faster flies the comet, for as we have seen it is a consequence of the law of gravitation that the nearer planets are to the sun the faster they move in their orbits, and the same rule applies to comets too. As the comet dashes up to the sun his pace becomes something indescribable; it has been reckoned for some comets at three hundred miles a second! But behold, as the head flies round the sun the tail is always projected outwards. The nucleus or head may be so near to the sun that the heat it receives would be sufficient to reduce molten iron to ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... and garner, so as to be tucked in stray corners, memories of a flower in a hedgerow, a boat on the wing, a look in a dog's eyes, and the indescribable smell of a mixture of tobacco, sea air, and leather; and all the other little genuine antique, and ever new odds-and-ends of the collection labelled Love in ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... discharge of large bodies of turbid fresh water in the sea may be still more fatal to marine tribes. In the "Principles of Geology" I have shown that large quantities of mud and drowned animals have been swept down into the sea by rivers during earthquakes, as in Java in 1699; and that indescribable multitudes of dead fishes have been seen floating on the sea after a discharge of noxious vapours during similar convulsions. But in the intervals between such catastrophes, strata may have accumulated slowly in the sea of the Lias, some being formed chiefly of one description ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... deserved the name. Here the guard said they were directed to detain them till the arrival of their lord, who had appointed this the place of rendezvous. He was expected to meet them in a few hours, and these were hours of indescribable torture to Julia and madame. From the furious passions of the duke, exasperated by frequent disappointment, Julia had every evil to apprehend; and the loneliness of the spot he had chosen, enabled him to ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... full of heart, and of indescribable delight that he has given his bread to the starving man. He stands up, brightly, with his back to the fire for a moment, and then goes back and brushes off the snow from the man's matted hair, then back ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... And oh! the indescribable ecstasy of it, the joy of it, just to lie there, trembling with weakness, and drink in great drafts of that life-giving air, thinking of nothing, caring for nothing but that they were alive there in their great out-of-doors. One never comes ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... us on going into the so-called hospital grounds was something indescribable. The land was perfectly level; no drainage whatever; covered with long, tangled grass; skirted by trees, brush, and shrubbery; a few little dog-tents not much larger than could have been made of an ordinary table-cloth thrown over a short rail, and under these lay huddled together the men ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... Spaniards was indescribable. There was mutiny and rebellion among them. The soldiers of Narvaez, who looked for a pleasant promenade through a land of peace and plenty, were appalled. There was daily, desperate fighting. The Mexicans had manned the temple of the war-god which ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... various entries, and little knots of people, evil-looking and unclean for the most part, lurked in the background or sat on benches and diffused through the stale, musty air that distinctive but indescribable odour that clings to police vans and prison reception rooms; an odour that, in the present case, was pleasantly mingled with the suggestive aroma of disinfectants. Through the unsavoury throng we hurried, and up a staircase to a landing from which several passages diverged. Into one of these ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... shoes before going to sleep, but they brought me a pair for a boy of twelve and assured me that there were no others in the town, and those I had come with were in tatters which were hardly to be kept on my feet. The mud was indescribable,—the entire country flooded, and all the bridges across a river we must pass carried away, except one over a narrow gorge where the rocks approached so closely that a couple of logs reached from side to side, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... important face that indescribable shade of embarrassment. "Waal,"—the youngster balanced this word judicially,—"I forgot 'bout'n the tur-key whings till this minute. I ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... the roar of the conflict was incessant, and its violence indescribable. It was broken now and then by a kindly soul among the elderly women raising ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... all the conveniences of a city, and with excellent railroad facilities, the hospital grounds were perfectly secluded by surrounding walls. As one entered through the high gates, an indescribable repose was felt, enhanced by the charm with which Nature has endowed the spot, in the abundant shade, evergreen, and fruit trees, and rose-bushes, holly, and other shrubbery. The classical naval monument, formerly at the Capitol in Washington, has within a few years been removed, and with two ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various |
