"Inexpressive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... presents, and the great desirability that its progress and developments should be observed and its history written; also of C. N———, who, it appears, is passing through a new moral phasis. He is silent, inexpressive, talks little or none, and listens without response, except a sardonic laugh; and some of his friends think that he is passing into permanent eclipse. Various other matters were considered or glanced at, and finally, between five and six ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... executioner, red with the life-blood of him who gave him being—a father he revered, and whose memory he cherished. The filial and hereditary hatred was in his heart. The feeling was mutual. Both knew it, and the cold, passive eye, and relaxed, inexpressive features but bespoke the subdued, not the extinguished passion. Chillie McIntosh is only one-fourth Indian in blood. Hopothlayohola is a full-blooded Indian. His features are coarse and striking. His high forehead and prominent brow indicate intellect, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... nights, when she came up to the attic cold and hungry, with a tempest raging in her young breast, Emily's stare seemed so vacant, her sawdust legs and arms so inexpressive, that Sara lost all control over herself. There was nobody but Emily—no one in the world. ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... clump of askaris stood leaning on their rifles. Over against her chair the porters were aligned in a great semicircle, tribe by tribe. The intervening flames of a camp fire shone richly on the massed bronze bodies and the brutish faces that had turned, for once, inexpressive. As Lilla sat down in her chair, a low murmur passed through their ranks and lost itself in the gilded fronds of palm trees that hung stiffly, like the scenery of a ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... standing with the weepers off his cuffs and the crape off his bonnet; he had divested himself of the hateful things whenever he found himself alone, and he was listening with a rapt and inexpressive face to the pensive call of the curlew as it rose over the fields, and the tears were dropping down ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... by paleness, roundness of the form, softness of muscle, fair hair, sleepy, half-closed eyes, and a dull, sluggish, inexpressive face. In this temperament the brain and all other parts of the body appear to be slow, dull, and languid, and the whole body little else than one great manufactory of fat. These temperaments, however, are rarely found pure, but mixed or blended in an almost endless variety of ways, ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... and he had made for himself a mental atmosphere of gloomy and sardonic reverie, a sort of murky medium through which the event appeared like a featureless shadow having vaguely the shape of a man; a shape extremely familiar, yet utterly inexpressive, except for its air of discreet waiting in the dusk. It ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... thousand heartaches; the fingers clutching hungrily at keys that might be other fingers; the fiddler with his eyelids clenched while he dreams that the violin, against his cheek is the satin cheek of "the inexpressive She;" the singer with a cry in every note; the moonlit youth with the mandolin tinkling his serenade to an ivied window; the dead-marches; the nocturnes; the amorous waltzes; the duets; the trills and trinkets of flirtatious scherzi; the laughing roulades; the discords melted into concord ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... insincerity in that poetical religion, which at the best is a sorry substitute indeed for the light that is from heaven. Above all, it flings, as indeed we have intimated, an air of absurdity over the orthodox Church-of-Englandism—for once to quote a not inexpressive barbarism of Bentham—which every now and then breaks out either in passing compliment—amounting to but a bow—or in eloquent laudation, during which the poet appears to be prostrate on his knees. He speaks nobly of cathedrals, and minsters, and so forth, reverendly adorning all the land; ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... the end of the Ming period, is about as empty as Velasquez and more brilliant than Frans Hals. The eighteenth century, one inclines to believe, was the same everywhere. Stylistic obsession and the taste for material beauty ended in mechanical prettiness, altogether inexpressive or sentimental. In both hemispheres painting was reduced to a formula—a formula for producing ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... already been inscribed upon innumerable tombstones. But when we ridicule the triteness of monumental verses, we forget that Sorrow reads far deeper in them than we can, and finds a profound and individual purport in what seems so vague and inexpressive unless interpreted by her. She makes the epitaph anew, though the selfsame words may have served for ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... de Nesville as one beautifully bound first volume of a human document can be from another equally attractive. "First volume of a human document" isn't inexpressive of a young girl, is it? Heaven knows what this one may be by the time the second and third volumes are ready for publication; but at present one turns over the leaves with pleased surprise. There's something original and charming ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... neighbor has a mocking-bird: its song Has been as little heeded as the noise Of rattling wheels incessant; but to-day One of its strains brought all Elysium back Into my heart. What was it? What the tie Linking it with some inexpressive joy? At length I solve the mystery! Those notes, Pensively slow and sadly exquisite, Were what the wood-thrush piped at early dawn After that evening passage in the boat, When stars came out, that never more shall set. Oh! sweet and clear the measured cadence fell Upon my ear in slumber—and I woke! ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... night; Then a long, lonely, leaden mere Backed by a desolate fell As by a spectral battlement; and then, Low-brooding, interpenetrating all, A vast, grey, listless, inexpressive sky, So beggared, so incredibly bereft Of starlight and the song of racing worlds It might have bellied down upon the Void Where as in terror Light was ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... impossible to transgress, the picture of a little girl with reddish hair, and a skin freckled with tiny pink marks, who held a trowel in her hand, and smiled as she directed towards me a long and subtle and inexpressive stare. And already the charm with which her name, like a cloud of incense, had filled that archway in the pink hawthorn through which she and I had, together, heard its sound, was beginning to conquer, to cover, to embalm, to beautify everything with ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... romancing in the shadow of a provincial palazzo? On the face of the matter, I know, there is often no very salient peg to hang a romance on. A sort of dusky blankness invests the establishment, which has often a rather imbecile old age. But a hundred brooding secrets lurk in this inexpressive mask, and the Chigi Palace did duty for me in the suggestive twilight as the most haunted of houses. Its basement walls sloped outward like the beginning of a pyramid, and its lower windows were covered with massive iron ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... hoarse cry of the vulture, flapping her wings and mounting into the air, alarmed at the intrusion of man. Those countenances, which had so lately beamed with daring and defiance, were unmeaning and inexpressive; and what with the effect produced on the dead bodies, by the excessive heat and the mangling and disfiguration of the tomahawk and scalping knife, scarcely one could be distinguished from another. Friends tortured themselves in vain, to find friends, in the ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... effulgence comes Of gladness, as here laughter: and below, As the mind saddens, murkier grows the shade. "God seeth all: and in him is thy sight," Said I, "blest Spirit! Therefore will of his Cannot to thee be dark. Why then delays Thy voice to satisfy my wish untold, That voice which joins the inexpressive song, Pastime of heav'n, the which those ardours sing, That cowl them with six shadowing wings outspread? I would not wait thy asking, wert thou known To me, as thoroughly I to thee am known.'' He forthwith ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... leg?" asked General Feversham, as he rose briskly from his chair. He was a small wiry man, and, in spite of his white hairs, alert. But the alertness was of the body. A bony face, with a high narrow forehead and steel-blue inexpressive eyes, suggested a ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... her husband. To her surprise his usually sensitive face did not show her what was passing in his mind. Indeed she thought it looked peculiarly inexpressive ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... in the dull, hard, inexpressive plaster, she stands by the workmen while they put it into the marble. She must watch them, for a touch of the tool in the wrong place might alter the whole expression of the face, as a wrong accent in the reader will spoil ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... better go down to lunch," Mrs. Adams said, absently. "She's at the gong again." "In a minute, mama. Now about the sleeves——" And she went on with her planning. Unfortunately the gong was inexpressive of the mood of the person who beat upon it. It consisted of three little metal bowls upon a string; they were unequal in size, and, upon being tapped with a padded stick, gave forth vibrations almost musically ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... new and still secret rite of shaving— for David was willing to shed his blood to prove that he was a man—he looked out of his bedroom window and saw her down in the garden helping her uncle feed his pigeons. He did not want to see her. He was younger than his years, this honest-eyed, inexpressive fellow of seventeen, but for all his youth he was hard hit. He grew abruptly older that first week; he didn't sleep well; he even looked a little pale under his freckles, and his mother worried over his appetite. When she asked him what was the matter, he said, ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... she sobbed. So she did always at any mention of helpless suffering, flinging herself down in wild rebellion and abandonment so that epilepsy had been suspected. But it was not epilepsy. It was pity. She, in her inexpressive, childish way, shared with the love-martyr of Galilee the heartrending capacity for imaginative sympathy. In common with Him and others of her kind, she was not only acquainted with grief, but reviled and rejected. In her schooldays boys ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... quality so badly. The night would have been unendurable if she could not have imagined Mr. Brumley of that quality. And imagining him of that quality her heart yearned for him. She felt that she had been terribly inexpressive that afternoon, she had shirked points, misstated points, and yet he had been marvellously understanding. Ever and again his words had seemed to pierce right through what she had been saying to what she had been thinking. And she recalled with peculiar comfort a kind of abstracted ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... bird's. He had often thought it strange that Vincent Heron had a bird's face as well as a bird's name. A shock of pale hair lay on the forehead like a ruffled crest: the forehead was narrow and bony and a thin hooked nose stood out between the close-set prominent eyes which were light and inexpressive. The rivals were school friends. They sat together in class, knelt together in the chapel, talked together after beads over their lunches. As the fellows in number one were undistinguished dullards, Stephen and Heron had been during ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... her, listened to her as she chattered away her hurried, inexpressive unmeaning slang, and looked at him with her ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... imprisoned in the labyrinths of hair; in others the eyes deep with feeling or hard with gemlike brilliancy have caught it, or the lips that tell and hide so much, or the nostrils quivering with momentary emotion. Beauty, inexpressive of inner meaning, must, we conceive, have had but slight attraction for him. We do not find that he drew "a fair naked body" for the sake of its carnal charm; his hasty studies of the nude are often faulty, mere memoranda of attitude and gesture. ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... Boston Literary Gazette, gave a personal description which was not sufficiently flattering, and roused the lady's indignant comments. It dared to state that she was "short, with a broad face, blue, inexpressive eyes, and seemed, if such a thing may be named, about forty years of age." Imagine the sensations this paragraph produced! She at once retorted, exclaiming in mock earnest, "I appeal! I appeal to the Titian of his age and country—I appeal to you, Sir Thomas Lawrence. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... without a thought of complaint,—and die at last with their hearts full of love for the brutes who have trampled upon them. Mrs. Stilton was perhaps forty years of age, of middle height, moderately plump in person, with light-brown hair, soft, inexpressive gray eyes, and a meek, helpless, imploring mouth. Her voice was mild and plaintive, and its accents of anger (if she ever gave utterance to such) could not have been distinguished from those of grief. She did not often attend our sessions, and it was evident, that, while ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... to me to set him to copy Scripture maps, and draw small illustrations of any Biblical scene that occurred in the lesson of the day. I have a book full of his childish fancies now, all elaborately colored on week-days—"Joseph and his Brethren" in gaudy turbans, and wonderfully inexpressive countenances, reminding me of Flurry's dolls; the queen of Sheba, coming before Solomon, in a marvelous green tiara and yellow garments; a headless Goliath, expressed with a painful degree of detail, more fit for the Wirtz Gallery than ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... considered, is as injudicious as illogical. In what does expression consist but in form and color? It is one of the ends which these accomplish, and may be itself an attribute of both. Color may be expressive or inexpressive, like music; form expressive or inexpressive, like words; but expression by itself cannot exist; so that to divide painting into color, form, and expression, is precisely as rational as to divide music into notes, words, and expression. Color may be pensive, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the game. When the three men came into the office the boy dropped his chair to the floor and stared at Ed who stared back at him. It was as though a contest of some sort went on between them. A tall neatly-dressed woman, with a brisk manner and pale, inexpressive, hard blue eyes, stood back of a little combined desk and cigar case at the end of the room, and as the three walked toward her she looked from Ed to the sullen-faced boy and then again at Ed. Sam concluded she was a woman bent on having her own way. ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... him about—" poor Mrs. Lanfear, the kindest of women, privately lamented to her friends; for Dredge, at that time—they kept him all summer at the bungalow—had one of the most encumbering personalities you can imagine. He was as inexpressive as he is to-day, and yet oddly obtrusive: one of those uncomfortable presences ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... action, and which are therefore worthy of the name of thoughts. But as every thought, or definite exertion of intellect, implies two subjects, and some connection or relation inferred between them, the term "ideas of relation" is not incorrect, though it is inexpressive. ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... That haunts the west wind, in the joyous roll Of Arethusan fountains, or among The wastes where Ozymandias the strong Lies in colossal ruin, thy control Speaks in the wedded rhyme. Thy spirit gave A fragrance to all Nature, and a tone To inexpressive Silence. Each apart— Earth, Air and Ocean—claims thee as its own, The twain that bred thee, and the panting wave That clasped thee ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... and whose "Ingoldsby Legends" are famous, was a stout, squat, and "hearty-looking" parson of the old school. His face was full of humor, although when quiescent it seemed dull and heavy; his eyes were singularly small and inexpressive, whether from their own color or the light tint of the lashes I cannot say, but they seemed to me to be what are called white eyes. I do not believe that in society he had much of the sparkle that characterized his friend, or that might have been expected in so formidable a wit of the pen. Sam Beazley, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... hands behind his back, his feet slightly apart, stood very straight and stiff by the side of the compass stand. His face, now hardly visible, was as inexpressive as the ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... of every class and temperament. Some have nothing salient either in feature or in form. Their eyes are inexpressive, their lips pale, and every feature denotes a want of energy, weakness, and something like suffering. One might almost say they seemed to be incomplete, and that the torch of their lives had not ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... Anne's wooden, inexpressive countenance was a great comfort to Sir Charles, in some moods. Though she was clever enough, she did not have that superfluity of sympathy and responsiveness that makes one go away regretting one has said so much, and disliking the other person for one's expansion. One never ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... inadequacy. No wonder she had not been one of the few that he cared to talk to; every word she uttered must so obviously have diminished the inducement! She had been cheap, trivial, conventional; at once gushing and inexpressive, eager and constrained. She could feel him counting the minutes till the visit was over, and as the door finally closed on the scene of her discomfiture she almost shared the hope with which she confidently credited him—that ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... foot, with its extreme proportional smallness, that gives the precious instability, the spring and balance that are so organic. But man should no longer disguise the long lines, the strong forms, in those lengths of piping or tubing that are of all garments the most stupid. Inexpressive of what they clothe as no kind of concealing drapery could ever be, they are neither implicitly nor explicitly good raiment. It is hardly possible to err by violence in denouncing them. Why, when ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... evidently in love with Mr. Verty," said Miss Sallianna, compassionately; "that is, the child fancies that she feels a rare and inexpressive delight in his presence. ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... me, mould me, mellow me for use. Pervade my being with Thy vital force, That this else inexpressive life of mine May become eloquent and full of power, Impregnated with life and strength divine. Put the bright torch of heaven into my hand, That I may carry it aloft And win the eye of weary wanderers here below To guide their feet into the paths of peace. I ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... thickness is a very dead and inexpressive thing compared with one varied and stressed at certain points. If you observe any of the boundaries in nature we use a line to express, you will notice some points are accentuated, attract the attention, more than others. The only means you have to express this in a line drawing is ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... she rises, radiant and unhurt, in her native form. Modred contemplates the prodigy with astonishment; his lust and his brutality inflame him more than ever. Eagerly he gazes on her charms; in thought he devours her inexpressive beauties. And now he can no longer restrain himself; with sudden start he leaps into the river. The waves are wrought into a sudden tempest; they hurry him to and fro. He buffets them with lusty arms; he rides upon the billows. But vain is human strength; the unseen ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... the Inspector but to dismiss him. He had answered all questions willingly, and with a countenance inexpressive of guile. He even indulged in a parting shot on his own account, as full of frank acceptance of the situation as it was fearless in its attack. As he halted in the doorway before turning his back upon the room, he smiled for the third time as he ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... Elsie withdrew her observant short-sighted eyes from Mrs. Pendleton's crowning glory, and a smile barely touched the corners of her expressively inexpressive mouth. Mrs. Pendleton glanced up, faintly ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... as singularly inexpressive, but he made an effort to gather his courage when his companion broke off ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... the hair, the politician's eye was usually small, and intensely black—not the dead, inexpressive jet, which gives the idea of a hole through white paper, or of a cavernous socket in a death's-head; but the keen, midnight darkness, in whose depths you can see a twinkle of starlight—where you feel that there is meaning as well as color. There might be an expression of cunning along with that ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... was more undeserved than usual, for a look of gentle happiness softened and inspired her naturally plain features, and lent an unwonted tender grace to a somewhat inexpressive figure. ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... other, and then away. Joe turned unexpectedly, and shambled off in the direction of the village. Not a word out of Anna as she returned by the side of her protector, but every now and then she looked at him sideways. The Boy felt her inexpressive gratitude, and was glad his journey had been delayed, or else, ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... of the surely not harmless earth. And the man himself! He was primly and precisely dressed, but he had an indefinable resemblance to a goat; his hair curled like horns; and he had the thin, restless, sneering lips, the impudent, inexpressive eyes of the goat. I found myself curiously oppressed by him. I hated his slow, deliberate movements; the idea that the air he breathed should mingle with the air of the carriage, and be transferred to my own lungs and blood, was horrible to me. I pitied ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and rode up to him, Jose was still swearing. He was walking among the wounded sheep, shooting those which he considered helplessly injured. His mouth was dry, his voice husky, and on his lips foam lay in yellow flecks. He ceased to imprecate only when, by repetition, his oaths became too inexpressive to be ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... companion, had been as a gentle and loving sister to raise for a time his flagging spirits. Mr. Howe had ever been at his side to show unceasing acts of kindness and brighten those dark hours with a tender but inexpressive sympathy. Captain Trevelyan could never forget the motives which actuated these, still he did not exhibit any outward show of gratitude save by a ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... smile, except twice, once briefly when I sent word to him by the waiter to order a consommation and once, at some length, when we departed. On these occasions the effect was almost emotionally illuminating, so inexpressive was the ordinary cast of his features. A strange lad; I like to think of him always sitting there, passively, playing the accordion and shaking his sleigh-bells. He suggested a static picture, a thing of always, but I know it is not so, for even the next summer he had disappeared ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... faddle; absurdity &c 497; vagueness &c (unintelligibility) 519. [routine or reflexive statements without substantive thought, esp. legal] boilerplate, clich. V. mean nothing; be unmeaning &c adj.; twaddle, quibble, scrabble. Adj. unmeaning; meaningless, senseless; nonsensical; void of sense &c 516. inexpressive, unexpressive; vacant; not significant &c 516; insignificant. trashy, washy, trumpery, trivial, fiddle-faddle, twaddling, quibbling. unmeant, not expressed; tacit &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... for whom one hint of human revelation outweighs in value a warehouseful of inexpressive furniture, a room of this type holds one superlative interest. It is an index of character no less infallible than its owner's face. Its salient features may tell the same tale as a dozen others in the same station—the tale of a soldier going to and fro in a land of unrest. But its ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... all at his ease, but being a business man, and being also blessed with a peculiarly inexpressive face, he was ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... sacramental, as he came afterwards to understand—for his own conscience at the moment, the transaction seemed to have but the transitoriness, as also the guilt of a vagrant love. A connexion so light of motive, so inexpressive of what seemed the leading forces of his character, he might, but for the sorrow which stained its actual issue, have regarded finally as a mere mistake, or an ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... lake region will not only continue to be the favorite resort of tourists and artists, but will become, during the summer season, the abode of families whose abundant means enable them to enjoy the healthful climate, the gorgeous scenery, and the invigorating sports which lend an inexpressive charm to the sojourn ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... CHAPTER II. (BLACK FISH).—I give the popular fishermen's names for all these fish, for generally they are the best. Where any name happens to be vague or inexpressive, I shall say so, and suggest another. I do so now, touching the Black Fish, so-called, because blackness is the rule among almost all whales. So, call him the Hyena Whale, if you please. His voracity is well known, and from the circumstance ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... dumb endurance—as he would wait from day to day until the longed-for moment arrived. It had happened often before, Saltash's caprice had sometimes driven him to the verge of rebellion, but no one—not even Saltash himself—ever suspected it. Silent, phlegmatic, inexpressive, Larpent held on ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... behind the ears, and drawn out in the face to a portentous length, the narrowness of his forehead up to its summit widening over the eyebrows, which were shaggy and met, pointing downwards over the bridge of the nose, imperfectly shading with their sable outline the cold and inexpressive eyes; the short, rough beard, irregularly spread over the angular and bony outline of the mouth—every feature of this man's dreadful countenance made me shudder, and strange notions crossed my mind about the mysterious affinities between man ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... over the back of a chair. He faces the spectator, on his head a long, pointed black hat with a wide brim. His collar is white. A shadow covers the face above the eyes. These are rather melancholy, inexpressive; the flesh tints are anaemic, almost morbid. We are far away from the Vermeer of the Milkmaid and the Letter. There is something disquieting in this portrait, but it is a masterpiece of paint ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... result. Filey had lost no time in finding a place for himself by Miss Levering, while Hermione trailed dutifully round the garden with the others. Occasionally she looked over her shoulder at the two on the seat by the sunken wall—Vida leaning back in the corner motionless, absolutely inexpressive; Filey's eager face bent forward. He was moving his hands in a way ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... quick death, to prolong the toiling, bitter existence—pilgrims of eternal hope; born in the belief, in the sane and wholesome creed that, no matter what the horror is, no matter what the burden's weight must be, one must live! It takes a great deal to wake in these inexpressive, indifferent faces illumination of interest. At what should ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... himself as if she were holding a mirror up before him. He beheld himself a heavy, solid figure, unsuitably clad for the time and place, with a florid, square face, well-visored with good living and sane opinions—an inexpressive countenance. Not a rock face, exactly, but a kind of pressed-brick-and-cement face, a "business" face upon which years and feelings had made no mark—in which cocktails might eventually blast out a few hollows. He had never seen himself so distinctly in his shaving-glass as he did ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... than Val, in spite of the disadvantage of his evening dress, Lawrence stood looking down at him with brilliant inexpressive eyes. "Is it your own idea that I stayed on at Wanhope ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... failed to acquire the absolute mastery of drawing which was possessed by the better disciples of the schools. But he is painstaking, determined to get on, and eager to satisfy the continually increasing demand for work. His draperies are confused and unmeaning, his faces round, with small features, inexpressive button mouths, and weak chins, and his flesh tints have little of the glow which is later the prerogative of every second-rate painter. Yet Catena succeeds, like many another careful mediocre man, in securing patronage, and as the sixteenth century opened he gained the distinction ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... he was of that indeterminate type which never seems to acquire a personality of its own. The small and bony and steel-blue face was as neutral as the spare and reticent figure that sat before a bald table in a bald room as inexpressive and reticent as its occupant. Copeland was not only unknown outside the Department; he was, in a way, unknown in ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... latitude, thus casually given, she took in full measure. For twenty minutes, by the clock, she aired her views in a stream of vigorous colloquial English, lapsing into ready-made phrases of melodrama, common to the normally inexpressive, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... recent instances in that capacity, his singular aptitude to error, however simple the part he had to enact, or clear and concise the instructions with which it might be accompanied. As Sheridan had planned the character, the face was every thing, and the lengthened, dull, and inexpressive visage of the subject was too strictly ministerial to be lost; and the author would, as he said, "defy him to go wrong," Still his friend was sceptical; nor were his doubts removed by Sheridan's assuring him that the representative of Lord Burleigh "would have only ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... Her noble pagan head gave her privileges that she neglected, and when people were admiring her brow she was wondering whether there were a good fire in her bedroom. She was simple, kind and good; inexpressive but not inhuman or stupid. Now and again she dropped something that had a sifted, selected air—the sound of an impression at first hand. She had no imagination, but she had added up her feelings, some of her reflections, about life. Lyon talked of the old days in Munich, reminded ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... and with no other jewels upon her person than diamonds. Very beautifully she was dressed; doing infinite credit, no doubt, to those three artists who had, between them, succeeded in turning her out of hand. And her face, also, was beautiful, with a certain cold, inexpressive beauty. She walked up the room very slowly, smiling here and smiling there; but still with very faint smiles, and took the place which her hostess indicated to her. One word she said to the countess and two to the earl. Beyond that she did not open her ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... She was engaged in contemplating with a studiously inexpressive countenance the stub of her precious and only pencil. It needed ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... once to look pugilistic. He could not say anything, for at this moment two or three men strolled up to speak to Lady Holme. While she was talking to them, Pimpernel Schley came in sight waltzing with Mr. Laycock, one of those abnormally thin, narrow-featured, smart men, with bold, inexpressive ayes, in whom ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... the severity of the weather, he would sit for days together moping in the chimney-corner, without taking the least notice of what was passing around him. Brian never mentioned this boy—who had a strong, active figure; a handsome, but very inexpressive face—without a deep sigh; and I feel certain that half his own dejection was occasioned by the mental aberration ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... elaborately clean, and conveying by a virtuous and steadfast smirk a cheerful confidence in his innocence. Johnson solid and inexpressive, Redbrook unconcerned and debonair, Marzo uneasy. These four form a little group together on the captain's left. The rest wait unintelligently on Providence in a row against the wall on the same side, shepherded by the bluejackets. The first bluejacket, ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... Spaniard. His face was brown and sun-dried, with deep lines drawn downwards from the nose to the lips in such a manner that cynicism and a mildly protesting tolerance were contending for mastery in an otherwise studiously inexpressive countenance. ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... doggedly bent on achieving the job which he had set himself to perform; and the faces, although somewhat tense and set and grave, were inexpressive of emotion. I noticed only three persons overcome, two Italian women, very poor, embracing an aged fellow countrywoman, and all weeping. Physical fatigue and seriousness were the only inner states that one could read ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... In figure he was about the middle height, and strongly though sparely built. The head was well-proportioned; the face a lean oval; the complexion sallow; the hair and small moustache very dark; the brown eyes inexpressive and close-set, revealing a tendency to suspiciousness—Bancroft prided himself on his prudence. A certain smartness of dress and a conscious carriage discovered a vanity which, in an older man, would have been fatuous. A large or a sensitive nature would in youth, at least, have sought ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... systoichiai ton enantion, or parallel columns of contraries: the One and the Many: Odd and Even, and the like: Good and Evil: are indeed all reducible ultimately to terms of art, as the expressive and the inexpressive. Now observe that Plato's "theory of ideas" is but an effort to enforce the Pythagorean peras, with all the unity-in-variety of concerted music,—eternal definition of the finite, upon to apeiron, the infinite, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... me to take the Andante rather quickly as he feared it might prove tedious. I assured him that his Andante, no matter how short its duration might be, would inevitably prove tedious if it was played in a vapid and inexpressive manner; whereas if the orchestra could be got to play the very pretty and ingenious theme, as I felt confident he meant it and as I now sang it to him, it would certainly please. Mr. Potter was touched; he agreed, and excused himself, ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... to submit that the humble pie of that period was indeed the pie named in the list quoted; and not only so, but that it was made out of the "umbles" or entrails of the deer, a dish of the second table, inferior of course to the venison pasty which smoked upon the dais, and therefore not inexpressive of that humiliation which the term "eating humble pie" now painfully describes. The "umbles" of the deer are constantly the perquisites of ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 6. Saturday, December 8, 1849 • Various
... and on the way back Miss Barnes overtook them, and came up with them to see Eleanor, who was an old friend of hers. Betty introduced her to Helen and she walked between them up the hill and necessarily included both of them in her conversation. She was a homely girl, with dull, inexpressive features; but she was tall and well-proportioned and strikingly well dressed. Betty had taken an instant dislike to her at the time of their first meeting and greatly to Eleanor's disgust had resisted all her advances. Eleanor had ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... control. Let anyone of these issues be injected into his campaign and the lines of party action would be cut "athwart." For Woodrow Wilson was dealing with the inevitable embarrassment of a party system dependent on an inexpressive homogeneity. The grouping of the voters into two large herds costs a large price: it means that issues must be so simplified and selected that the real demands of the nation rise only now and then to the level of political discussion. The more people a party ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... when she came up to the garret cold, hungry, tired, and with a tempest raging in her small breast, Emily's stare seemed so vacant, her sawdust legs and arms so limp and inexpressive, that Sara lost ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... is difficult to pronounce decidedly on their original workmanship: but, judging by what appears, it would seem to have been of a ruder and coarser character than that of the slabs or of the royal statues. The Nebo images are heavy, formal, inexpressive, and not over well-proportioned; but they are not wanting in a certain quiet dignity which impresses the beholder. They are unfortunately disfigured, like so many of the lions and bulls, by several lines of cuneiform writing inscribed ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... the captain, with a suggestion of challenge in the speech, as if he would like to have the epithet resented. But the man only regarded the officer with steady, inexpressive eyes. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... which doth follow talk that causes 2605 The baffled heart to speak with sighs and tears, When wildering passion swalloweth up the pauses Of inexpressive speech:—the youthful years Which we together passed, their hopes and fears, The blood itself which ran within our frames, 2610 That likeness of the features which endears The thoughts expressed by them, our very names, And all the winged hours ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... mastery of painting, and that the great designer has not lost his power of dealing at will with the human body. But the frigidity of old age had fallen on his feeling and imagination. The faces of his saints and angels here are more inexpressive than those of the Last Judgment. The type of form has become still more rigidly schematic. All those figures in violent attitudes have been invented in the artist's brain without reference to nature; and the activity of movement which he means to suggest, is frozen, petrified, suspended. ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... of satisfaction illuminated for a moment the detective's inexpressive features. He rose ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... who finds himself much against his will in doubtful company. He accepted ungraciously the cup handed to him by Mrs. Fyne, took an unwilling sip or two and put it down as if there were some moral contamination in the coffee of these "swells." Between whiles he directed mysteriously inexpressive glances at little Fyne, who, I gather, had no breakfast that morning at all. Neither had the girl. She never moved her hands from her lap till her appointed guardian got up, leaving ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... Letters in a strange handwriting filled her with anxiety. She would feel of the wax with her fingers, bury the letters in her pocket, hesitate about delivering them, and the moment when mademoiselle unfolded the terrible paper and scanned its contents with the inexpressive eye of elderly people was as full of suspense to her as if she were awaiting sentence of death. She felt that her secret and her falsehood were in everybody's hand. The house had seen her and might speak. The quarter knew her as she was. ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... reader, tarry here, nor miss The law of Minneapolis. There was a carpenter called Brown, A citizen of that great town, Who stood his "inexpressive she" A dollar's worth of comedy. Was it a Gaiety burlesque, Or labour of Norwegian desk? Or did they spout in stagey tones Morality by H. A. Jones? Or tear romance to rags and set it In heavy platitudes ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams
... jack-pots, say ten—or twenty, if the member from Silver City preferred—and then stop? It would do excellently, the member said, so softly that the Governor looked at him. But Wingo's large countenance remained inexpressive, his black eyes still impersonally fixed on space. He sat thus till his chips were counted to him, and then the eyes moved to watch the cards fall. The Governor hoped he might win now, under the jack-pot system. At noon he should have a disclosure ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... him! Robin would seem to be what another Madonna-like young creature might have been if she had been my wife. She would not know that she was a little saint on an altar. She would be the shrine of the past and the future. In my inexpressive way I should be worshipping before her. That her possible son would rescue the House of Coombe from extinction would have meant much, but it would be a mere ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... determined, at the very first opportunity, to introduce the name of Jentham and observe what effect it had on the bishop. With these little plans in his mind the chaplain crept about the tea-table like a tame cat, and handed round cake and bread with his most winning smile. His pale face was even more inexpressive than usual, and none could have guessed, from outward appearance, his malicious intents—least of all the trio he was with. They were too upright themselves to suspect ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... wrote fine fatherly letters that would have stood the test of publication. Then his communications became comparatively hurried and matter-of-fact. His boy's return home for the holidays was always rather a stirring time for his private feelings, but he became more and more inexpressive. He would sometimes lay a hand on those growing shoulders and then withdraw it. They felt braced-up shoulders, stiffly inflexible or—they would wince. And when one has let the habit of indefinite feelings grow upon ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... sounds about him, or it may have been the intuition of disaster, had awakened from his uneasy slumber. He questioned them, insisted on knowing all. When he was finally brought, with much difficulty, to see how matters stood, stupor, immense and profound, filled his boyish, inexpressive eyes. More than ten ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola |
