"Inexplicable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gravitation, in no wise retarded the development of their art; the solidity of their buildings and accuracy of their aim was not affected by it. But sooner or later they were forced to grapple with phenomena, which the supposed parallelism of all perpendiculars erected from the earth's surface rendered inexplicable: then also commenced a struggle between the prejudices, which for centuries had sufficed in daily practice, and the unprecedented opinions which the testimony of ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... in the days of the smuggler known as "Rob Roy of the West," a piratical band buried on the coast of South Devon a quantity of treasure which was, of course, abandoned by them in the usual inexplicable way. Some time afterwards its whereabouts was discovered by three countrymen, who visited the spot one night and divided the spoil between them, Giles taking treasure to the value of L800, Jasper L500 worth, and Timothy L300 worth. In returning they had to ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... it, then mechanics and chemistry must play second fiddle in all that whirl and dance of the atoms that make up life. And that is all the vitalists claim. The physico-chemical forces do play second fiddle; that inexplicable something that we call vitality dominates and leads them. True it is that a living organism yields to scientific analysis only mechanical and chemical forces—a fact which only limits the range of scientific analysis, and which ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... very happy, and she had intended to tell Agatha about her happiness, the very first of all. Now she was far from happy. Possibly—a thousand things, the most possible, that Robert had responded to Agatha's suggestion, and stopped and asked her that abrupt question, from an impulse as sudden and inexplicable as had possessed her when she married George Holt. Kate fervently wished she had gone to the cornfield ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Cable, but I declare that it astonishes(b) me far more to think that for his mere amusement(c), that to entertain a mere idle hour(c'), he has created(a') 'Othello' and 'Lear,' and I am more than astonished, I am awe-struck(b'), at that inexplicable elasticity of his nature which enables him, instead of turning away(d) from calamity and grief(e), or instead of merely defying(d') them, actually to make them the material of his amusement(d''), and to draw from the wildest agonies of the human spirit(e') a pleasure which is not only ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... Raleigh's post of captain of the guard was taken from him; and his patent of wines was revoked, though not without a nominal compensation being made. To complete his ruin, it was contrived to involve him in a charge of treason. Most writers have concurred in speaking of this passage of history as inexplicable; it is the opinion of the last historian of Raleigh, Mr. Tytler, that he has found sufficient evidence for regarding the whole plot as a device of Cecil, and he has supported this opinion by cogent arguments. Lord Cobham, a violent and ambitious but weak man, had engaged in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... with any thing except pictures, to aid them in comprehending the idea of signs of words. It seems to them supernatural that we see in a book things taking place, or having occurred at a distance. No amount of explanation conveys the idea unless they learn to read. Machinery is equally inexplicable, and money nearly as much so until they see it in actual use. They are familiar with barter alone; and in the centre of the country, where gold is totally unknown, if a button and sovereign were left to their choice, they ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... and found it unprecedented; so unprecedented that in the midst of his revery he rose from his chair, moved by some inexplicable impulse of anxiety, and bolted his door. He feared lest something more should enter. He was barricading himself ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the sins of his youth was over. He was again a young college man, and thoroughly ashamed of himself. The amusement he had found in teasing Ruth suddenly seemed inexplicable, in view of this tragic culmination. Flushing and awkward, he stood looking on while Peggy bent over the wounded dog, unable to restrain her tears. But when she attempted to remove a splinter of glass from the gash for which ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... woods, even then, thou of the Vrishni race, I thought that Suyodhana deserved death at my hands. What thou, however, O Krishna, wishest to do for thy friends is scarcely strange, although it seems inexplicable how the object in view is capable of being effected by either mildness or its reverse. Or, if thou deemest their immediate destruction to be preferable, let it be effected soon without further deliberation. Surely, thou knowest how Draupadi was insulted in the midst of the assembly by Duryodhana ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the third audience came, and the king was as inexplicable as the first time; he conversed with the duke kindly and freely showed him the most marked attention and personal confidence; but so often as the duke sought to introduce the subject of politics and the public interests which had brought him to Berlin, the king interrupted him and ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... whose loves were countless and often venal, and yet whose renown had come down to posterity as gloriously as that of supreme poets. He thought of lifelong passionate attachments, which to the world were inexplicable, and which the world never tired of leniently discussing. He overheard people saying: "Yes. Picked her up somewhere, in a Promenade. She worships him, and he adores her. Don't know where he hides her. You see them about together sometimes—at concerts, for instance. ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... conversation interrupted by the Houston girls when he was bringing her home, the preceding afternoon. On the instant, she was sorry that she had permitted the others to leave her alone with this man. For some inexplicable reason, she was suddenly afraid of him. She who had never acknowledged fear of any person, who had always met every circumstance calmly as it arose, found herself confronted now by a condition of affairs that rendered her less self-reliant. Her mind was in a turmoil of a hundred ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... won't have little Amy asked the sort of question she most dislikes,' interposed Laura; 'I had rather ask if you laugh at us for thinking many ghost stories inexplicable?' ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hands. He knew that they were to carry the sacred vessels of the Gospel, which must not be blurred or fouled by contact with human pride or uncleanness. He knew that the very mysteries of Gethsemane and Calvary would be inexplicable, and that none might stand on that holy hill, save those that had clean hands and a pure heart; and because of all this, He turned to them, by symbol and metaphor, to impress upon their heart and memory the necessity ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... his studio; but the visit he undoubtedly had a right to pay to his neighbors was the true cause of his haste; he had already forgotten the pictures he had begun. At the moment when a passion throws off its swaddling clothes, inexplicable pleasures are felt, known to those who have loved. So some readers will understand why the painter mounted the stairs to the fourth floor but slowly, and will be in the secret of the throbs that followed each other so rapidly in his heart at the moment when he saw the humble brown door of the rooms ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... train, but nothing was ever casual to her; she met each hour expectantly on tip-toe and, as her mother had once observed, laughed and wept her way around the clock. Sarah smiled broadly—going to the station to meet Aunt Trudy had, for some inexplicable reason, resolved itself into a joke for her. Sarah was not excited and she represented solid common-sense from her straight Dutch-cut hair to her square-toed sandals, for no amount of argument from Rosemary could induce ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... irremediable ([Greek: anekeston]). The reading of two good manuscripts [Greek: aneikaston] (otherwise only known as a late Greek word) may be correct. If so, it may mean 'unparalleled', or 'inexplicable'. ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... good business?" she offered, and won from Ruth more merriment as inexplicable as ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... to herself; he repented the step he had taken; he regretted Paris and his life there. Suddenly sea-sickness overcame him. Every one knows the effect of that disorder. The most horrible of its sufferings devoid of danger is a complete dissolution of the will. An inexplicable distress relaxes to their very centre the cords of vitality; the soul no longer performs its functions; the sufferer becomes indifferent to everything; the mother forgets her child, the lover his mistress, the strongest man lies prone, like an inert mass. Paul was carried to his cabin, where he stayed ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... dreaming! This unexpected mildness—this inexplicable tremor in his sister's voice: it must be some occult influence of the night season on the sisterly mind, possibly akin to a fear of ghosts! He made a mental note of it in view of future favors, yet for ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... the strangers found inexplicable. Of this, however, there was no doubt: their arrival had been at a most unfortunate time, when some answer to the supposed call of the totem was then expected. They were that answer, and the result—who can say what the consequences would be when ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... madrepores, or to the roads made by insects in the barks of trees. After so many turnings and windings, your head swims, a vertigo seizes you, and you wonder if you are not a mollusk in an immense shell. I do not speak of the mysterious corners, of inexplicable coecums, low doors opening no one knows whither, dark stairways descending into profound depths; for I could never finish talking of this architecture, which you seem to walk through as if ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... Stretton Street there spread over my mind the strange and inexplicable events of that night when De Gex's man-servant Horton had dashed out after me, and suddenly implored me to see his master. Ah! I saw the amazing cleverness of the whole plot—a plot such as could only be conceived by ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... enable me to make a pretty shrewd guess at their meaning when they spoke to me, and also to make myself fairly well understood by them, and I gathered from Bowata that the gift was singularly opportune, inasmuch as that the apes had of late, for some inexplicable reason, been unusually pertinacious in their raids upon the island; but that, thanks to my original gift, their attacks had been successfully withstood without loss of life on the part of the natives, the invading apes having all been slain before it was possible for them to effect a landing. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... to make good our rush for shelter—leaving the natives who were endeavouring to storm the poop evidently much astonished at our sudden and inexplicable retreat—when the two carronades barked out simultaneously; and the terrific hubbub of shouts and yells down in the waist ceased as though by magic, to be succeeded the next instant by surely the most dreadful outburst of ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... darkness. Then with a sudden burst of illumination, a marvellous glow of a deep violet color shot over the whole room, and the two men turned and faced each other both with inquiry in their looks, so unexpected was this theatrical effect to the one, and so inexplicable its cause and purpose to ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... his chair, but found himself pacing the living-room with an altogether inexplicable nervousness. He had held the line many a bad night at the Front while Death spat out of the darkness on every hand; he had smoked in the faces of his men to cover his own fear and to shame them out of theirs; ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... "inexplicable creatures, whose words are all mystery, whose lips never tell the real secrets of their hearts, who weep, and pray, and tremble—why? God knows, but man, never! I shall go, Amelie, because I have resolved ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... while his son and a young lady were talking to each other in the most impassioned manner, kissing each other, and making themselves in all respects perfectly at home; was a position so tremendous, so inexplicable, so utterly beyond the widest range of his capacity of comprehension, that he fell into a lethargy of wonder, and could no more rouse himself than an enchanted sleeper in the first year of his fairy lease, a ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... being forced by his family against his inclination to plead madness, prevented his exerting his parts- -but he has not acted in any thing as if his family had influence over him—consequently his reverting to much good sense leaves the whole inexplicable. The very night he received sentence, he played at picquet with the warders and would play for money, and would have continued to play every evening, but they refuse. Lord Cornwallis, governor of the Tower, shortened his allowance of ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... heavy blow sounded upon the canvas of the tent. I started, but my condition did not permit me to rise; again the same kind of blow sounded upon the canvas; I thought for a moment of crying out and requesting assistance, but an inexplicable something chained my tongue, and now I heard a whisper on the outside of the tent. 'He does not move, bebee,' said a voice which I knew. 'I should not wonder if it has done for him already; however, strike again with your ran'; and ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... all the other effects of the visible and tangible world of which we are a self-conscious part. The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is; marvels and mysteries acting upon our emotions and intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the conception of life as an enchanted state. No, I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvellous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural, which (take it any way you like) is but a manufactured ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... accusation.... Well, he stood cleared of that. But the other charges, Judith, the others—" He rested his hands on his sword hilt and gazed broodingly into the deepening night. "The court could only find as it did. I myself, sitting there, listening to that testimony.... It is inexplicable!" ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... opened up for himself a new route, and from the first moment of his appearance on the scene he has taken so high a stand, both by his pianoforte-playing and by his compositions for this instrument, that he is to the multitude an inexplicable phenomenon which it looks on in passing with astonishment, and which stupid egoism regards with a smile of pity, while the small number of connoisseurs, led by a sure judgment, rather by an instinct of progress than ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... "Child's Play," "Once, when I was groaning aloud with physical pain, a young gentleman came into the room and nonchalantly inquired if I had seen his bow and arrow. He made no account of my groans, which he accepted, as he had to accept so much else, as a piece of the inexplicable conduct of his elders. Those elders, who care so little for rational enjoyment, and are even the enemies of rational enjoyment for others, he had accepted without understanding and without complaint, ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of their honeymoon, each one perfect, except for the occasional disquieting presence of passion, of unappeasable desire in the man. This male fire was as mysterious, as inexplicable to her as that first night,—something to be endured forgivingly, but feared, almost hated for its fierce invasion of her. If her husband could only take her as companion,—the deep, deep friend, the first and best for the long journey of life! Perhaps ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... not why. They will be led by the nose by these vague reports of which I spoke above; and the mere fact that their informant mentioned one village and not another will compel their footsteps with inexplicable power. And yet a little while, yet a few days of this fictitious liberty, and they will begin to hear imperious voices calling on them to return; and some passion, some duty, some worthy or unworthy expectation, will set its hand upon their shoulder ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... faith in myths and mysteries, he would not have the least interest in denying that the brain, though we know not how, is the only seat for us of thought and mind and spirit. Let him have never so firm a faith in life immortal, yet this immortal has, he knows, put on mortality, through an inexplicable contact with matter; and his faith is not in the least shaken by learning that this point of contact is the brain. He can admit with the utmost readiness that the brain is the only instrument through which supernatural life ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... to my psychic faculty (as you know, Mr. O'Donnell, some people are born with the faculty) to enable me to detect the presence of the superphysical. I generally feel the latter incorporated in some inexplicable manner in the ether, or see it inextricably interwoven ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... again. As he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and communicated, for some purpose now forgotten, with a chamber in the highest story of the building. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that, as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang out loudly, and so did ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... a Scotch schoolmaster of the rough old-fashioned type. His pleasure was law, irrespective of right or wrong, and the reward of submission to law was immunity from punishment. He had his favourites in various degrees, whom he chose according to inexplicable directions of feeling ratified by "the freedom of his own will." These found it easy to please him, while those with whom he was not primarily pleased, found it impossible to ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... we can know existent ones, and hence our knowledge of the past does not imply that the past is exerting any efficiency. If a distinction is made between an efficiency and an entity, then the reason why efficiency started at any particular time and ceased at another would be inexplicable. Once you admit that there is no difference between efficiency and the entity, you at once find that there is no time at all and the efficiency, the entity and the moment are all one and the same. ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... kissed it again and again, with tears, as if praying for forgiveness. For the first time he realised the inner meaning of his mother's nature as he knew it—the undertone of sadness in her gentle ways. And he could not free himself from a strange, inexplicable feeling of guilt in himself, though till that day he had ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... interest her grandmother with an account of it. Nina rarely had so interesting a topic of conversation. The old lady would go instantly to her son. And Richard—Harriet could imagine him, tired, harassed, heartsick over the recent inexplicable weakness of his wife, having to face another woman's treachery, having to listen to the demure announcement of the little secretary's ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... version with Finn story. With Messianic tradition. Epitaph of Bishop Aberkios. Voyage of Saint Brandan. Connection of Fish with goddess Astarte. Cumont. Connection of Fish and Dove. Fish as Fertility Symbol. Its use in Marriage ceremonies. Summing up of evidence. Fisher King inexplicable from Christian point of view. Folk-lore solution unsatisfactory. As a Ritual survival completely in place. Centre of action, and ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... Shakespeare and Homer! Who knows, or can figure what the Man Shakespeare was, by the first, by the twentieth perusal of his works? He is a Voice coming to us from the Land of Melody: his old brick dwelling- place, in the mere earthly burgh of Stratford-on-Avon, offers us the most inexplicable enigma. And what is Homer in the /Ilias/? He is THE WITNESS; he has seen, and he reveals it; we hear and believe, but do not behold him. Now compare, with these two Poets, any other two; not of equal genius, for there are none such, but of equal sincerity, who wrote as earnestly and from the ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... and Barny put in charge of the ship, when he ascertained the first landmark he was acquainted with; but as soon as the Head of Kinsale hove in sight, Barny gave a "whoo," and cut a caper that astonished the Yankees, and was quite inexplicable to them, though, I flatter myself, it is not to those who do Barny the favor ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... have been permitted to persist so long a time as he has in his course of contumacy towards the Church. Have we not evidence enough in his writings alone to convict him of heresy? The carelessness of the bishop upon such a matter as this is quite inexplicable!' ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... of himself that he offered her, the less pleased she seemed to be. As the evening wore on she developed a tartness that was inexplicable to Evan. He cast back in his mind in vain to discover the cause of his offense. Yet she would not let him stop talking about himself either, but drew him on with many questions, interested in his tale it would seem, merely for ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... Oh, you inexplicable person! How can you sit there quietly? Don't you hear those cries? They're stopping now—the accident has gone ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... Brophy could not avoid a feeling of curiosity concerning Starcus. To him the fellow's conduct was inexplicable. While his presence among the Sioux was proof that he was "with them" in thought, intention, and feeling, yet there was the friendly act of the morning during the struggle with the grizzly, and his late interference to prevent the warrior from ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... the order on the table, as it might have been refuse, and with it a bit of white paper. The sadness of the city, and the inexplicable sadness of June mornings, overwhelmed George as he munched at the meat-pie and drank the coffee, and reached over for the sugar and reached over for the mustard. And he ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... defined by Gaussen, is "that inexplicable power which the divine Spirit formerly exercised over the authors of the Holy Scriptures, to guide them even in the employment of the words they were to use, and to preserve them from all error, as well as from ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... clock tolled forth the hour of midnight. The solemn strokes were immediately answered by a multitude of chimes, sounding across the Thames, amongst which the deep note of Saint Paul's was plainly distinguishable. A feeling of inexplicable awe crept over the carpenter as the sounds died away. He trembled, not from any superstitious dread, but from an undefined sense of approaching danger. The peculiar appearance of the sky was not without some influence in awakening these terrors. Over ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... prototype—but still, scientific—to the discerning eye, artful. The other, something more than rhythmical, more than smooth, beyond the control of human agency, beyond the power of man to analyze as to synthetize—more than science can explain, more than even art dare claim. The one explicable, the other inexplicable; the one from the hand of patient skill—of talent; the other a result of force mysterious, divine. The lions of Alexius Comnenus, it is said, could roar louder than ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... no understanding such a person. Beth gave it up. The whole affair was inexplicable—his attitude towards Searle at the station, his abduction of herself and the maid, and this trailing of the pair of them across these terrible places, for no apparent ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... Belgian violinists of to-day is Eugene Ysaye, who possesses that magnetism which charms alike the musician and the amateur, because of his perfect musical expression. He possesses the inexplicable and inexpressible something which takes cold judgment off its feet and ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... something inexplicable about the intensity of national tastes and the violence of national differences. If, as in the good old days, I could boldly believe a Frenchman to be an inferior creature, while he, as simply, wrote me down a savage, there would be an easy end of the matter. ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... have a four-pound loaf and a shoulder of mutton for supper now than a smaller quantity of extra choice viands; and I manage to satisfy the cravings of my inner man before leaving the table. But what about a place to sleep. For some inexplicable reason these people refuse to grant me even the shelter of their roof for the night. They are not keeping hotel, they say, which is quite true; they have a right to refuse, even if it is twenty miles to the next place; and they do refuse. "There's ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... understanding of the doctrine against which it protests. It is superficial because it does not recognize that around, above, beneath, within, every form of personality that the "curve of space" covers, there is present the aboriginal "world-stuff," unfathomable and inexplicable, out of which all souls draw the material element of their being, in which all souls come into contact with one another, and from which all souls half-create and ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... inexplicable, however, in a girl of Spanish origin, Madame Claes was uneducated. She knew how to read and write, but up to the age of twenty, at which time her parents withdrew her from a convent, she had read none but ascetic books. On her first entrance into the world, ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... admitted, we may do our best to weigh it and to resolve it into its elements, it is at bottom the vital spark that resists all examination, however scientific we may seek to be. We can test for this and for that, but in the final analysis genius is inexplicable. It is what it is, because it is. It might have been different, no doubt, but it is not. It is its own excuse for being; and, for all that we can say to the contrary, it is its own cause, sufficient unto itself. Even if we had Sainte-Beuve's ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... meantime Sam continued to have inexplicable longings and hopes. He kept surprising himself by the changing aspect of his own viewpoint of life. He found himself indulging in the most petty meannesses, and following these with flashes of a kind of loftiness of mind. Looking at a ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... ponderous and silent, against the jamb of the door giving into the kitchen. Her huge arms were folded tightly across her breast, and, for some inexplicable reason, Chloe found the stare disconcerting. The enthusiasm of her victory damped perceptibly. For if the fish-eyed stare held nothing of reproach, it certainly held nothing of approbation. Almost the girl read a condescending pity in the stare of the china-blue ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... faith. Also they say in their descriptions of other rivals of Buddha, that these, in order to gain esteem, copied the Nirgrantha and went unclothed, or that they were looked upon by the people as Nirgrantha holy ones, because they happened to have lost their clothes. Such expressions would be inexplicable if Vardhamana's community had not become of great importance. [Footnote: See for the history of Siha related above, Spence Hardy, Manual of Budhism, pp. 226, 266, and Jacobi, Ind. Antiq. Vol. ...
— On the Indian Sect of the Jainas • Johann George Buehler
... was inexplicable to him: how this flute-playing, which sounded so sad and plaintive, could come from such a place of ill-repute. The shouts and the clinking of glasses which sounded in between filled his soul with horror. Sudden rage seized him; if he had been tall and strong he would have sprung into the house and ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... such an artless, elegant way about her temples and in her neck; the neck itself had such a pretty set and carriage, the figure was so graceful in its girlish outlines; and above all, her manner had such an inexplicable combination of the utterly free and the utterly unapproachable. Lawrence lay thinking all this, or part of it; Dolly was thinking how she should dispose of him. She could not well say anything that would directly seem to condemn her father. And while she was thinking what ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... having fallen from the observance of anniversaries, that I am still a devout worshiper of places, and in this sense, perhaps, an idolater.... My love for certain places is inexplicable to myself. They have, for some reasons which I have not detected, so powerfully affected my imagination, that it will thenceforth never let them go. I retain the strongest impression of some places where I have stayed the shortest time; thus there is a certain spot in the hill country ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... There is an inexplicable tendency, in this country only, for working people in general to look upon domestic service as an unworthy, if not altogether degrading vocation. The cause may perhaps be found in the fact that this same scorning public having for the most part little opportunity to know ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... order to show you that what happened to me could not have happened in the natural order of things, and to enable you to understand that I was the victim of an inexplicable fascination. ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... what was learned some days ago from the interviews given and from inquiries in all quarters where it seemed likely that they would throw any light on what has really occurred. Since then something as inexplicable has happened as anything heretofore reported, something from many points of view more startling and unexplainable. There came into Jerusalem recently three Persians of the sort called magi, or wise men, the ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... Scripture "in the Saxons tongue." And when that language "waxed olde and out of common usage," he says, the Bible "was again translated into the newer language." There has never been any means of testing these statements, which were probably due to some inexplicable error. Abundant evidence exists relating to many Saxon and later translations of various parts of the Bible before the time of Wycliffe. Among the most notable of the early translators were the Venerable Bede and Alfred the Great. Some portions of Scripture were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... you do wonder, at Lord C——-'s conduct. If he was not outwitted into his peerage by Lord B——, his accepting it is utterly inexplicable. The instruments he has chosen for the great office, I believe, will never fit the same case. It was cruel to put such a boy as Lord G—-over the head of old Ligonier; and if I had been the former, I would have refused that commission, during the life of that honest ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... and glasses needed to convey food to twenty mouths on a festal occasion. They persistently eluded her attempts to marshal them into order. She discovered that she had put forks for the soup—that in some inexplicable way at the plate destined for an important guest there was a large kitchen spoon of iron, a wild sort of whimsical humor rose in her from the ferment of utter fatigue and anxiety. When Paul came in, ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... later in the afternoon Margaret was down among the rose-bushes, where Lawrence had joined her, after Rose had executed that inexplicable feminine manoeuvre of denying herself to ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... eleven years and three months old: a straight-limbed, quiet child, the son of his mother. And all Sophia's recent life, that life which had entwined itself wholly about the promised babe, was mingled the inexplicable strangeness of her dream-memory. To her, New Year's night had become a sacred time; and she loved to keep a vigil through it in her own, lonely way. This year, however, it was to be marked in a different manner. For Michael ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... Peregrine! An ordinary young man falls in love with an ordinary young woman because, for some inexplicable reason, she appears to him a mystery, bewitchingly incomprehensible. Suffering under this strange hallucination, he wooes, whereupon our ordinary young woman, shutting her eyes to the ordinariness of our very ordinary ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... Madeira, and after it a stroll through the gardens and shrubberies and down to the sheds, a mile, or nearly, distant. There, a somewhat confused vision of 'grand shorthorns,' and an inexplicable jumble of pedigrees, grand-dams, and 'g-g-g-g-g-g-dams,' as the catalogues have it; handsome hunters paraded, steam-engines pumping water, steam-engines slicing up roots, distant columns of smoke where steam-engines are tearing ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... the library. His manner was that of a man labouring with some dreadful thought, and endeavouring to give an air of carelessness and insensibility to his behaviour. Perhaps no carriage of any other sort could have produced a sensation of such inexplicable horror, or have excited, in the person who was its object, such anxious uncertainty about the event.—"That is your letter," ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... of color is exciting or disturbing, tranquilizing or pleasing, inexplicable and inexpressible, affecting the senses like an appeal to the passions or the appetite. One might as well explain the love of sport, literature, art or vice. The sense of color is a nerve sense, and this sense varies ...
— Color Value • C. R. Clifford
... does there appear less of local self-government or of central representative government, less of civil liberty, or even of the aspiration for it. The contrast between the character of this colony and the heroic antecedents of the Dutch in Holland is astonishing and inexplicable. The sordid government of a trading corporation doubtless tended to depress the moral tone of the community, but this was an evil common to many of the colonies. Ordinances, frequently renewed, for ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... release, felt the sudden inexplicable isolation and aloneness even before Alvar and Johnson used their life-guns and shot out of sight, Johnson toward the left and Alvar back toward that other red-rimmed ...
— To Each His Star • Bryce Walton
... races, by the advance of civilization upon them, we have many and painful proofs. History records innumerable instances of nations who were once numerous and powerful, decaying and disappearing before this fatal and inexplicable influence; history WILL record, I fear, similar results for the many nations who are now struggling; alas, how vainly, against this desolating cause. Year by year, the melancholy and appalling truth is only the more apparent, and as each new instance multiplies ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... had some personal business to attend to before going aboard, and in order to save time had taken Mabel with her. In some inexplicable manner Mabel had strayed from her side. She had made frantic search for the child and finally, not daring to go to us with the truth, had conceived the idea of making us believe that she had taken Mabel aboard the ship. She had bribed the purser, a Frenchman whom she knew, to corroborate her story, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... a fluid. A human being is not. In some inexplicable way, however, I was becoming more and more like the drop of water after it is dropped into a large volume of water. I was 'spreading', while all the time seeming to ...
— Unthinkable • Roger Phillips Graham
... momentary and inexplicable experience, the babble of thought went on as before. The old dream mounted again heavenwards, like a cloud at sunset; wild fancies fashioned themselves in the brain. And then, in fantastic images, Hadria seemed to see a panorama of her own life and the general life pass before her, in all ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... love, mad. If Porphyria's lover is mad, there is method in his madness. Her superior social rank has stifled hitherto the instincts of the heart; she has never given her lover any favors; but to-night, at the dinner-dance, by one of those strange and inexplicable caprices that make Woman the very Genius of the Unexpected, she has a vision. In the midst of the lights and the laughter, she sees her lonely lover sitting dejectedly in his cold and cheerless cottage, thinking of her. She slips away from ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... illustrious name of Wallace. He had crossed from Ireland with Cannon; but nothing is heard of him till apparently on the very morning of the day he produced a commission from James superseding the Earl of Dunfermline in favour of Sir William Wallace of Craigie. What would otherwise appear one of those inexplicable freaks by which James ever delighted to confound his affairs at their crisis, is amply explained by the fact that the new captain was the brother of Melfort's second wife. Fortunately Dunfermline was too good a soldier and too loyal a gentleman to resent the slight. ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... of John Mark drummed on the back of the chair, while he smiled down on her, an inexplicable ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... in the dark concerning the inexplicable taste for the sour, clotted product of a sweet, well-meaning cow and the buttery, but I have found out how it feels to be shot. I know it now ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... newspaper stories of a genie to whose wand fabulous tides of gold responded. These sight-seers were beholding a man credited with the power to cause or avert panics; one of the most lauded, the most hated and the most feared men in finance, and, for some inexplicable reason, after they looked at him it was no longer difficult to believe ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... concealment on which his life was based, the tragedy at the heart of it, worked like 'a worm i' the bud.' The first check to his artistic career—the 'hanging' incident and its sequel—produced an effect of shock and disintegration out of all proportion to its apparent cause—inexplicable ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... says: "To readers who care for a really good detective story 'The Circular Staircase' can be recommended without reservation." The Philadelphia Record declares that "The Circular Staircase" deserves the laurels for thrills, for weirdness and things unexplained and inexplicable. ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... conversations were, both to herself and Pitt; how living the truth had been made; how had names and facts taken on them the shape and colouring of nature and reality. It rushed back upon Esther, and her lips opened; and then, an inexplicable feeling of something like caution came down upon her, and she shut her ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... lilies came up with the warm breeze, so poignant-sweet that it struck at my heart, and made it beat, beat with a strange tremor in the beating that was like vague apprehension, and a kind of joy as strange and as inexplicable. ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a young man who, for some inexplicable reason, has won my regard. Whether you grant it, or not, I am going to ask one thing of you. Don't form any opinions about me as an ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... of customs, taken generally, is easily apparent, yet there are many customs which seem inexplicable upon such a principle. Why, for example, should the king of a primitive community be prohibited from sleeping lying down? or why should it be forbidden that he gaze upon the sea? [Footnote: Encyclopedia ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... when they had gone about three feet. Out they came in a rage, fluffing their feathers and snapping their beaks, and stood on each side of the hole to talk the affair over. First, one and then the other reentered to investigate. They found it quite inexplicable. They felt sure this was the way they had previously entered—so sure, in fact, that again and again they tried it, only growing more and more puzzled and indignant with each attempt. Finally they came to ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... had, lately, considered this question on several occasions. Being no coward, as far as mere fear for her life was concerned, she found it difficult to attribute such fear to him. Indeed, one of the traits in her which he found inexplicable and which he disliked was a curious fearlessness of death—not uncommon among women who, all their lives, have ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... happened, through its very violence, had left an impression like a dream. It seemed unreal, and yet it had made her forget everything else—the stage, the people around her, and even the very sapphire that had generated her inexplicable situation. She drew her glove over the ring. The lights were imminent. It would be hard to hide the great flash of the jewel. And besides, she didn't trust it. She couldn't tell in what direction it might not strike out a ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... these words, and it seemed superfluous to her that she should have been wished "good-night" by every one. A good night was impossible. The dingoes howled persistently in the woods below, and quite close there was the incessant "croak-croak-croak-croak" of tree-frogs, together with many other inexplicable and weird noises. ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... saw us or not. We shall walk together, then, as far as the spot where the cashier overtook us, and this will give me an opportunity of explaining, if not of excusing, my leaving the money on the counter. I am sure my conduct must have appeared inexplicable both to you and the cashier, although, of course, you would be too polite to ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... shorter time, had not the country been one sheet of ice, which rendered progression both difficult and dangerous. Each person of whom I enquired the distance told me more than the one before, until I thought that a Bosnian 'saht' (hour) was a more inexplicable measure than a German 'stunde' or a Scottish 'mile and a bittoch.' At length, however, the lights of Brod proclaimed our approach to the Turkish town of that name. On the left bank of the Save stands Austrian Brod, which, like all the Slavonic towns ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... Therea of Thaker's enormous, inexplicable mop; and it was that phenomenon that first broke ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... discoveries effected by the police on the day following upon that strange murder, vague, inconsistent discoveries to which the subsequent inquiry imparted neither consistency nor certainty. The movements of Antoinette Brehat remained as absolutely inexplicable as those of the blonde lady, nor was any light thrown upon the identity of that mysterious creature with the golden hair who had killed Baron d'Hautrec without taking from his finger the fabulous diamond from ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... of himself when he came upstairs again for his most ungrateful, inexplicable conduct towards you; and I lectured him well; and upon asking him to 'promise never to behave ill to you again,' he kissed my hands and wagged his tail most emphatically. It altogether amounted to an oath, I think. The truth is that Flush's nervous system rather than his temper was in fault, and ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... add to these considerations the fact that the sufferer was not a mere acquaintance, was not even only a great friend; but was the man who loved her, the man whose wife she had promised to become, Madame Hanska's ignorance appears totally inexplicable. ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... which previously contained nothing mental, and one ground for this belief is that matter is too dissimilar from mind to have been able to cause it. Or, more particularly, what are termed the nobler parts of our nature are supposed to be inexplicable, unless the universe always contained something at least equally noble which could cause them. All such views seem to depend upon assuming some unduly simplified law of causality; for, in any legitimate sense of "cause" and "effect," science seems to show that they are usually very widely dissimilar, ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... it happened that Mary Almira was on a visit to Mrs. Jonathan, her cousin german, the wife of Justice Jonathan of Brattleboro, Vt. And now fate began to take a swift and inexplicable interest in the affairs of Mary and Roswell. On August 30th, 1832, in company with Mrs. Jonathan and Mrs. French (the Mary Field of the first chapter of this book), Miss Mary Almira visited Fayetteville, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... for a moment was notable. She was in a certain way satisfied, and yet it wore a sort of compound mortification inexplicable very likely, to the lady herself, and perhaps, that only an acute eye of ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... a snow-slip landed on the cabin on the Point, burying both father and son. By some inexplicable means little Snjolfur managed to scratch his way out of the drift. As soon as he realised that for all his efforts he could not dig his father out single-handed, he raced off to the village and got people out of their beds. Help came too late—the old man was suffocated when ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... hair prematurely gray, but by clouding his once brilliant eyes with thoughtfulness, marked his aspect with premature old age and melancholy. The baronet's entrance into town life had been celebrated for his graceful vivacity; he was the animating spirit of every party, till an inexplicable metamorphosis suddenly took place. Soon after his return from abroad, he had married Miss Beaufort (a woman whom he loved to adoration), When, strange to say, excess of happiness seemed to change his nature ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... form of "possession" had begun to disappear, there had arisen new manifestations, apparently more inexplicable. As the first great epidemics of dancing and jumping had their main origin in a religious ceremony, so various new forms had their principal source in what were supposed to be centres of religious life—in the convents, and more especially in those ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... phenomena exhibited by heredity to be so like those of memory, and to be so inexplicable on any other supposition than that they were modes of memory, that it was easier to suppose them due to memory in spite of the fact that we cannot remember having recollected, than to believe that because ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... accession of the attribute of Passion into the mind. Whatever state, as regards either the body or the mind, exists with error or heedlessness, should be known as indicative of Darkness which is incomprehensible and inexplicable. The organ of hearing rests on space; it is space itself (under limitations); (Sound has that organ for its refuge). (Sound, therefore, is a modification of space). In perceiving sound, one may not immediately ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... the ordinary state of human nature, was at the same time visited with a disorder so afflictive, that they who know it by dire experience, will not envy his exalted endowments. That it was, in some degree, occasioned by a defect in his nervous system, that inexplicable part of our frame, appears highly probable. He told Mr. Paradise[193] that he was sometimes so languid and inefficient, that he could not distinguish the hour upon ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... executed the determination to be free. The heroic was most prominent: woman seemed to forget her feebleness and timidity, and boldly to dare, and with increased fortitude to bear every danger, every misfortune, with a heroism scarcely compatible with the delicacy of her nature. To this, or some other inexplicable cause, nature seemed to resort in preparation for coming events. In every State there came up men, born during the war or immediately thereafter, of giant minds—men seemingly destined to form and give direction to a new Government suited to the genius of the people and to the physical peculiarities ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... person, though a little distracting, he was, and he talked, we recall, of many things. He impressed us, we found afterwards, as a poseur beyond question, a conscious Ishmaelite in the world of wit, and in some subtly inexplicable way as a most consummate ass. He talked first of the excellent and commodious trams that came from over the passes, and ran down the long valley towards middle Switzerland, and of all the growth of pleasant homes and ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... "What can I do? I am not a Christian." The judges looked at each other, as much as to say, "It is the old story; it is that inexplicable, hateful obstinacy, which will neither yield to reason, common ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... contemplating the fuel, water, and steam, the source of the mechanical forces and how they operate, he may not have occasion to mention the engineer. But, the orderly and special results accomplished, the why the movement is in this or that particular direction, etc., are inexplicable without him. If Mr. Darwin believes that the events which he supposes to have occurred and the results we behold were undirected and undesigned, or if the physicist believes that the natural forces to which he refers phenomena are uncaused ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... old buffer in scarlet and gold who periodically takes an inexplicable interest in Tommy's belt and brass buttons. An excuse for his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... that way I cannot tell you. I have occupied this flat during the past five months, and I have never previously, within my recollection, lifted a window and gazed out to watch anybody's comings and goings. The thing is inexplicable. All I can say ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... now entirely without companionship, resenting from the outset both the ill-natured attacks and the playful personal allusions through which boys so often begin, and with time knit ever more firmly, their inexplicable friendships. To the taunts about Corsica which began immediately he answered coldly, "I hope one day to be in a position to give Corsica her liberty." Entering on a certain occasion a room in which unknown to him there hung a portrait of the hated Choiseul, he started back as he caught sight of it ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... mind to influence the Court in their favour, the shadowed purposes of such plays, the acting or speaking of a character "from those parts of the composition, which are inferred only, and not distinctly shewn," as well as a number of hitherto supposedly inexplicable asides and allusions, such as Bottom's "reason and love keep little company together nowadays; the more the pity, that some honest neighbours will not make them friends," would give to those acquaintances who were in Shakespeare's confidence an added ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... when the sun was throwing mountain shadows behind hillocks and pebbles, as Jean Valjean sat and pondered in a dumb way, a Savoyard came singing on his way, tossing his bits of money in his hands; drops a forty-sous piece near Jean Valjean, who, in a mood of inexplicable evil, places his huge foot upon it, nor listened to the child's entreaty, "My piece, monsieur;" and eager and more eager grows a child whose little riches were invaded, "My piece, my white piece, my silver;" and ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... plans of operation. The elevation of Peter III. to the throne was the signal, not only for the withdrawal of the Russian troops from the Austrian alliance, but for the direct marching of those troops as allies into the camp of the Prussians. Thus sudden are the mutations of war; thus inexplicable are the ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... the household articles represented have a strange and unusual appearance. One is a sort of short ladder, but with semicircular projections at the bottom, the use of which is not apparent; another may be a board at which some game was played; while a third is quite inexplicable. [PLATE CXXXIX., Fig. 8.] From actual discoveries of the utensils themselves, we know that the Assyrians used dishes of stone, alabaster, and bronze. They had also bronze cups, bowls, and plates, often elaborately patterned. The dishes had commonly a handle at ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... quite share Gordon's sense of security. Barry was different. He was a dear, and trying so hard; but Jerry had always had some power to sway him from his best, a sinister inexplicable influence. ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... Dwelling indeed no more but for the hoodie-crow, and for the fawn of the hill that years after I saw treading over the grass-grown lintel of its door. To-night the place was full of empty airs and ghosts of sounds inexplicable, wailing among the cabars that jutted black and scarred mid-way from wall to wall The byre was in a huddle of damp thatch, and strewn (as God's my judge) by the bones of the cattle the enemy had refused to drive before them in the sauciness of ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... no longer regard our werewolf as an inexplicable creature of undetermined pedigree. But any account of him would be quite imperfect which should omit all consideration of the methods by which his change of form was accomplished. By the ancient Romans the werewolf was ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... the old devil manage to do that? thought the Boy. But the plain truth was that his heart was in his mouth, for the sound came from the opposite direction, behind the Boy, and not near the Shaman at all. It grew louder, came nearer, more inexplicable, more awful. He felt he could not bear it another minute, sprang up, and stood there, tense, waiting for what might befall. Were all the ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... People who (for pity's sake) commit dastardly murders very basely, die like saints, and leave beautiful letters behind 'em (did you see Vaillant to his daughter? it was the New Testament over again); people whose conduct is inexplicable to me, and yet their spiritual life higher than that of most. This is just what the early Christians must have seemed to the Romans. Is this, then, a new drive[83] among the monkeys? Mind you, Bob, if they go on being ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
