"Undefinable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sweetest morsel of love's feast has been eaten, that the freshest, fairest blush of the flower has been snatched and has passed away, when the ceremony at the altar has been performed, and legal possession has been given? There is an aroma of love, an undefinable delicacy of flavour, which escapes and is gone before the church portal is left, vanishing with the maiden name, and incompatible with the solid comfort appertaining to the rank of wife. To love one's own spouse, and to be ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... houses were excessively ancient. In truth, it was a dream-like and spirit-soothing place, that venerable old town. At this moment, in fancy, I feel the refreshing chilliness of its deeply-shadowed avenues, inhale the fragrance of its thousand shrubberies, and thrill anew with undefinable delight, at the deep hollow note of the church-bell, breaking, each, hour, with sullen and sudden roar, upon the stillness of the dusky atmosphere in which the fretted Gothic steeple lay embedded and asleep. It gives ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... shadow, differing from the coarser gloom which we have been examining, in that it can attach itself to minds of the highest purity and keenness, and, indeed, does so to these more than to inferior ones. It is an undefinable pensiveness, leading to great severity of precept, mercilessness in punishment, and dark or discouraging ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... refrain from encouraging the open attentions of others, the truly loyal one will not allow herself to cherish a secret feeling or preference toward any other. Her every affection will be true as steel to the magnet. She will know no wayward inclinations, nor give way to whims and fancies, and undefinable emotions, to feelings, which she would blush ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... says your guide; "see here!" and flings one last door open. And that, like the door in Lord Dunsaney's play, opens on to the vastness of the stars. What is it that baffles us and remains undefined and undefinable? Just this: TAO: the Infinite Nature. You can survey the earth, and measure it with chains; but not Space, in which a billion leagues is nowise different from an inch or two, —it bears the same proportion ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... of the day on the harpsichord. Nor was her writing to be neglected; and I had already remarked that he had directed her correspondence with me, and had let his doctrines come to me through her pen. My sister was and still continued to be an undefinable being, the most singular mixture of strength and weakness, of stubbornness and pliability, which qualities operated now united, now isolated by will and inclination. Thus she had, in a manner which seemed ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Brunswick dwelling, where the settlers are often their own blacksmiths and carpenters, as well as splint pounders and shingle weavers. The walls are raised high enough to make the chamber sufficiently lofty, and the roof is neatly shingled. As we enter, an air of that undefinable English ideality—comfort—seems diffused, as it were, in the atmosphere of the place. There is a look of retirement about the beds, which stand in dim recesses of the inner apartment, with their old but ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... sword and poniard of fine workmanship. His hat, with a red plume in it, seemed a scornful protest against the gravity of Florentine costume, which had been exaggerated to the utmost under the influence of the Piagnoni. Certain undefinable indications of youth made the breadth of his face and the large diameter of his waist appear the more emphatically a stamp of coarseness, and his eyes had that rude desecrating stare at all men and things ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... yet serious assertion of the vast range and possibilities of human knowledge which, as M. de Remusat remarks—the keenest and fairest of Bacon's judges—gives Bacon his claim to the undefinable but very real character of greatness. Two men stand out, "the masters of those who know," without equals up to their time, among men—the Greek Aristotle and the Englishman Bacon. They agree in the universality and comprehensiveness of their conception of human knowledge; and they were absolutely ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... normal human being. At first sight there was nothing so very unusual in his face, certainly nothing that suggested a monster; and yet, whatever mood she chanced to be in, she could not be with him five minutes without being aware of something undefinable that always disturbed her profoundly, and sometimes became positively terrifying. She always felt the sensation coming upon her after a few moments, and when it had actually come she could hardly hide her repulsion till she felt, as to-day, that she must run from him, ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... towards the close of April, and the low descending sun was shedding the mellow light of his parting beams over the joyful face of reanimating nature. The invalid, during all the fore part of the day, had suffered greatly from pain—that general and undefinable distress which is so frequently found to be the precursor of approaching dissolution. To this had succeeded a sort of lethargic sleep, from which it was not easy to arouse her, so that she could be made to take any notice of what was passing around her. But now she awoke, clear and collected; ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... particles can act as a bridge by which we can cross over into the domain of intelligence.... What imaginable link is there between certain movements of certain molecules in my brain, on the one hand, and on the other hand primitive, undefinable, undeniable facts such as: I have the sensation of softness, I smell the odour of a rose, I hear the sound of an organ, I ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... champion, protectress, and playfellow of every brat under three years old, whom she jumps, dances, dandles, and feeds all day long. A very attractive person is that child-loving girl. I have never seen any one in her station who possessed so thoroughly that undefinable charm, the lady-look. See her on a Sunday in her simplicity and her white frock, and she might pass for an earl's daughter. She likes flowers too, and has a profusion of white stocks under her window, as pure and delicate ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... her undefinable position kept her from much repose on the second night also; but the following morning brought an unexpected letter from Swithin, written about the same hour as hers to him, ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... pursue me? Full in my rear they came on, baying like hounds on their game. Yillah trembled at their cries. My own heart beat hard with undefinable dread. The corpse of Aleema seemed floating before: its avengers ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... that men named De Quincey. He possessed in a high degree what James Russell Lowell called "the grace of perfect breeding, everywhere persuasive, and nowhere emphatic"; and his whole aspect and manner exercised an undefinable attraction over every one, gentle or simple, who came within its influence; for shy as he was, he was never rudely shy, making good his boast that he had always made it his "pride to converse familiarly more socratico with all human beings—man, woman and child"—looking on himself ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... imagination, a keen feeling for nature, or wide sympathy with man. Leslie Stephen says: "Pope never crosses the undefinable, but yet ineffaceable line, which separates true poetry from rhetoric." The debate in regard to whether Pope's verse is ever genuine poetry may not yet be settled to the satisfaction of all; but it is well to recognize the undoubted fact that his couplets still appeal ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... an undefinable character and distinctiveness about Sunday morning which is not possessed by any ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... actually saw her before him, it was neither love nor hate that he felt, but an undefinable and overmastering emotion that seemed to petrify him, so that he stood there quite silent with his ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... as the celebrant bowed at the lowest step before the high altar, the voices of the innumerable congregation joined the harmony of the organ, ringing up to the groined roof in an ancient Slavonic melody, melancholy and beautiful, and rendered yet more unlike all other music by the undefinable character of the Bohemian language, in which tones softer than those of the softest southern tongue alternate so oddly with rough gutturals and ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... she gravely said, 'I would try having it christened.' The counsel was taken, and I believe with success." The same belief is found both in North and South Wales. It is also testified to by a Scottish clergyman, who moreover adduces the following conversation as illustrative of it and of "an undefinable sort of awe about unbaptized infants, as well as an idea of uncanniness in having them without baptism in the house," which is entertained among the labouring classes in the north-east of Scotland. "Oh, sir," said the wife of ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... form, it may indicate a want, and even develop an unconscious appetency, but it can not, itself, reveal an object, any more than the feeling of hunger can reveal the actual presence, or determine the character and fitness, of any food. An undefinable fear, a mysterious presentiment, an instinctive yearning, a hunger of the soul, these are all irrational emotions which can never rise to the dignity of knowledge. An object must be conjured by the imagination, or conceived by the understanding, or intuitively apprehended ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... up from sources so subtile and undefinable, that it cannot be forced into particular channels; and whenever the attempt has been made, it ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... piano, and struck a few notes. There was something caressing in the way in which she touched the keys; whoever she was, she knew how to make sweet music; sad music, too, full of that undefinable longing, like the holding out of one's arms to one's friends ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... deal more outre in its form and dimensions. It wore an immense hat, of the shape of a cullender, and with almost as many holes, through which protruded little wisps of straw instead of feathers. The face was perfectly undefinable, having neither dimensions nor shape, resembling nothing of the live human species, and consisting apparently entirely of a nose which projected several inches beyond the brim of his hat; his shirt-collar ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... Helen, introduced me to the acquaintance of your family. You may remember the backwardness with which I first received their approaches; the very name of Percy had become ominously painful to me, and yet it inspired me with a strange and undefinable interest. A spell appeared to attract me towards you, and in spite of my first resolution to the contrary, in spite of the melancholy reserve that still dwelt upon my mind, I became an acquaintance, and at length ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... mind still unspotted, unimpaired. How could this be? Simply because they left unaltered the conviction that this man believed in God, and that the desire of his own heart brought him into some real, however undefinable, relation to him who was yet nearer to him than that desire itself, and whose presence had ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... To leap into the bows of the canoe, and disappear under the foliage, was the work of a single instant. All listened breathlessly for the slightest sound; and then every heart throbbed with the most undefinable emotions, as his lips were heard giving utterance to the deep emotion of ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... him the key to certain secret recesses of human nature hitherto sealed up in darkness. Along that border-line by which the glimmerings of consciousness are, as by the thinnest, yet the most impervious veil, separated from the regions of the unexplored and the undefinable, De Quincey walked familiarly and with privileged eye and ear. Many a nebulous mass of hieroglyphically inscribed meanings did he—this Champollion, defying all human enigmas, this Herschel, or Lord Rosse, forever peering into the obscure chasms and yawning ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... existed as Unity, to be afterward, during Eternity uttered forth, clothed with form, and the attributes that constitute them matter, the First Principle is Single and First, and yet not the VERY Illimitable Deity, incomprehensible, undefinable; but Himself in so far as manifested by the Creative Thought. To compare littleness with infinity,—Arkwright, as inventor of the spinning-jenny, and not the man Arkwright otherwise and beyond that. All we can know of the Very God is, compared to His Wholeness, only ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... he came up, bowed, and asked if he could have the pleasure of a dance. I readily consented, and before the party broke up I had given the stranger all my heart. I had never loved before, much as I had enjoyed men's company. Yet, although I gave my heart away, I had some undefinable dread of this dark, daring stranger, with the remorseless though beautiful eye, and that dare-devil step and bearing. Many times, again, we met; frequently in the meadows when the gloaming came; and ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... simplicity, as in We are seven? These are very popular, apparently, as poems for children to recite; yet in the one case it is beyond any teacher's power to show children the unearthly flaming beauty which alone gives the poem its peculiar quality and undefinable power; and in the other the maudlin sentimentalism and almost priggish piety of the verses are positively dangerous to the child's health of mind. Both types of recitation work out in the end to this—that when the child attains adolescence, and the great world ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... of so gentle, so helpless and so heavenly a form, sleeping in innocent security, confiding in the protection of man, and that very helplessness of her nature, awakens a sentiment of sympathy and tenderness, as undefinable as it is thrilling and transporting. And such was the sleep of Theodora: she was young and replete with charms, and, alas! but too helpless and in need of protection. Her beauteous form was displayed to the ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... close-cropped, his face ruddy and wrinkled like a withered apple, his eyes a misty blue, his big nose marked like a network of veins, his hands glazed and reddened, like his face, by wind and weather; standing, even under his mayoral robes, like a jockey. Of course he had the undefinable air of breeding; no one could have mistaken his class. But he was an undistinguished, very ordinary looking little man; and indeed he had done nothing for the past half century to distinguish himself above his fellows. There ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... Crown have been greatly diminished, and have been transferred in effect to the Houses of Parliament, or rather to the House of Commons, and the Ministers taken from the Houses are in fact, though not in name, servants of Parliament. This arrangement leaves an undefined and undefinable amount of authority to the Crown. It is not an arrangement which any man would have planned beforehand; but it is kept up, not because it is an anomaly, but because it has, as a matter of experience, turned out convenient. What even plausible argument ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... though we should strike off all the unmerited pensions, while the power of the crown remains unlimited, the very same undeserving persons might afterwards return to the very same list; or, if they did not, other persons, meriting as little as they do, might be put upon it to an undefinable amount. This, I think, is the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a moment I came to myself, to an undefinable sense of the tremendous pressure of nothingness. Darkness! it was not that; yet it was as little light. It was as if we lay in a dim, luminous chaos, ourselves an integral part of its self-containment. I did not stir; but I spoke: and my strange voice broke the enchantment. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... for want of a precise principle by which they may be tested; and they, therefore, depend upon Immethodical Induction, that is, upon the examination of as many instances as can be found, relying for the rest upon the undefinable principle of the Uniformity of Nature, since we are not able to connect them with any of its definite modes enumerated in chap. xiii. Sec. 7. To this subject we shall return in chap. xix., after treating of Methodical Induction, or the means of determining ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... mask, and out of politeness she must put down the hood of her mantle. A large muslin head-dress conceals half of her face, but her eyes, her nose, and her pretty mouth are enough to let me see on her features beauty, nobleness, sorrow, and that candour which gives youth such an undefinable charm. I need not say that, with such a good letter of introduction, the unknown at once captivated my warmest interest. After wiping away a few tears which are flowing, in spite of all her efforts, she tells me that she belongs to a noble family, that she has run away from ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... little good, but J still found the remoter darkness of the place and its perfect stillness too stimulating for the imagination. The echoing of the stir and crackling of the fire was * no sort of comfort to me. The shadow in the alcove at the end of the room began to display that undefinable quality of a presence, that odd suggestion of a lurking living thing that comes so easily in silence and solitude. And to reassure myself, I walked with a candle into it and satisfied myself that there was nothing tangible there. I stood that candle upon the floor of the alcove ...
— The Red Room • H. G. Wells
... respect, but as to their dry treatises on logic, immaterial dissertations on materiality, and abstruse investigations of useless subjects, they are mere literary legerdemain. Their disputations being usually built on an undefinable chimera, are solved by a paradox. Instead of exercising their power of reason they exert their powers of sophistry, and divide and subdivide every subject with such casuistical minuteness, that those who ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... test of faith, and the man knew it, as the woman did. He stood alone, with the opinions of the multitude against him, but there was, Maud Barrington felt, a great if undefinable difference between his quiet resolution and the gambler's recklessness. Once more the boldness of his venture stirred her, and this time there was a little flash in her eyes as she bore witness to her ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... same corps. John complained of thirst, and went to a little run of water but a short distance from them, in order to satisfy it. The interruption of Jarvis was particularly unseasonable. Jane was relating, in a manner peculiar to herself, in which was mingled that undefinable exchange of looks lovers are so fond of, some incident of her early life to the colonel that greatly interested him. Knowing the captain's foibles, he pointed, therefore, with his finger, as ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... eyes and looked on in silent wonder: for one of the pair was none other than the fairy maiden who had lived so long amongst them, and had endeared herself even to these rude spirits by her grace and sweetness and undefinable charm; the other, that youth with the wonderful eyes and saint-like face who had been captured and borne away to Saut after the battle before St. Jean d'Angely, and whose body they all believed had long ago been lying beneath the sullen waters of the moat, where so ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the extent and number, of the Alpine peaks impressed me with a vague, undefinable sense, which was not, I think, the anticipated sensation; and indeed if I had been in a poetic mood, it would have been quickly dissipated by the mock raptures of a young Englishman with a poodly moustache and an eye-glass. He called our attention to every chasm, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... Platonic dialogues, and when we turn to the pages of Aristotle, we find him also uncertain and inclined to vary his definitions.[5] Sometimes for him the good and pleasurable are the beautiful, sometimes it lies in actions, at others in things motionless, or in bulk and order, or is altogether undefinable. Antiquity also established canons of the beautiful, and the famous canon of Polycleitus, on the proportions of the human body, fitly compares with that of later times on the golden line, and with the Ciceronian phrase from the Tusculan Disputations. But ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... what Mrs. Hazleton desired. She thought him a coarse and vulgar-minded young man; and she wondered how a woman of such refinement as Mrs. Hazleton could be pleased with his society. There was at the end of that day only one impression in his favor, which was produced by an undefinable resemblance to her father, evanescent, but ever returning. There was no one feature like: the coloring was different: the hair, eyes, beard, all dissimilar. He was much handsomer than Sir Philip Hastings ever ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... kingdom, I demanded reality and could not digest legal fictions. I saw round me what sort of young men were preparing to be clergymen: I knew the attractions of family "livings" and fellowships, and of a respectable position and undefinable hopes of preferment. I farther knew, that when youths had become clergymen through a great variety of mixed motives, bishops were selected out of these clergy on avowedly political grounds; it therefore amazed me how ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... he raised his head to those three mysterious faces, the pigeon rose from its sculptured perch, circled about for a moment and wheeled to the east. The young man pressed his hand to his face, and then with an undefinable gesture sprang up the marble steps, the bronze doors closed behind him, and half an hour later the loiterers slouched away, and the frightened pigeon returned to its perch in ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... symbolical of Christ and the twelve apostles, from the chief of whom the cathedral takes its name. The windows of the triforium are large and divided into four compartments. The general disposition of the choir, with its radiating chapels, is superb; and it is exactly this satisfying, though perhaps undefinable, quality that is ofttimes lacking in an originally well-planned work which fails to inspire one. The choir contains an iron grille of the thirteenth century, of very beautiful workmanship, and is surrounded by five ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... at that time he was alarmingly ill from bronchitis, accompanied by unusually high fever. This passed off but slowly. The bodily health and strength appeared to be fully restored at the end of a few weeks, but there was an undefinable change. Shortly after this illness, though not in consequence of it, Dr Burton resigned his office of Prison Manager. He retired on an allowance of two-thirds of his former salary, remaining chairman of the ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... exhausted soldiers slept, even while the guns of the enemy roared in front of them, and during the brief halts which the confusion in the road caused, there was no real repose. The excitement of the battle and the retreat, and the undefinable sense of insecurity which their situation engendered, banished rest. Tired Nature asserted her claims, and the men yielded to them only when endurance had reached its ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... entered the great infirmary, the charm of her childhood laid its spell upon all who came near her. Not only was the gloomy ward brighter for her presence, but patients and nurses were infected with her strange personality and undefinable influence. Even the doctors lingered a moment longer at her bedside, looking pensively into the light of those eyes whose fires had been kindled under sunny skies, and at the beauty of that face, kissed into loveliness by the wandering winds ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... the inherent fitness and desirability of the tale. It is just such a story as a man would make up for himself, walking, in the best health and temper, through just such scenes as it is laid in. Hence it is that a charm dwells undefinable among these slovenly verses, as the unseen cuckoo fills the mountains with his note; hence, even after we have flung the book aside, the scenery and adventures remain present to the mind, a new and green possession, not unworthy of that beautiful name, The Lady of the Lake,[29] or that direct, ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... useless; they are not obligatory, there is no penalty for their violation; obedience to them cannot be enforced; there is no government but that of opinion, fluctuating and uncertain, undefined and undefinable, which is paramount to the fundamental law. This is what the despots of Europe call our government, and why they predict its downfall—a prediction now in the course of fulfilment, if these anarchical principles can be recognized as ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... cautiously stepped out upon the still silent veranda. The chairs which he and Louise Macy had occupied were still, it seemed to him, conspicuously confidential with each other, and he separated them, but as he looked down into the Great Canyon at his feet he was conscious of some undefinable change in the prospect. A slight mist was rising from the valley, as if it were the last of last night's illusions; the first level sunbeams were obtrusively searching, and the keen morning air had a dryly practical insistence which ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... certainly near him,—but was already seated with the Testament open ready to read as requested. The Cardinal raised himself in his chair,—a sense of lightness, and freedom, and ease, possessed him,—the hopeless and tired feeling which had a few minutes since weighed him down with an undefinable languor was gone,—and his voice had gained new strength and energy when he once ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... the Italians were not lacking in integrity, honesty, probity, or pride, their positive and highly analytical genius was but little influenced by that chivalrous honor which was an enthusiasm and a religion to the feudal nations, surviving the decay of chivalry as a preservative instinct more undefinable than absolute morality. Honor with the northern gentry was subjective; with the Italians Onore was objective—an addition conferred from without, in the shape of reputation, glory, titles of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... going to say "With Aline Joyeuse," but a feeling of restraint stopped him, an undefinable sentiment, a sense of shame at pronouncing her name in the studio which had heard so many others. There are things that do not go together, one scarcely knows why. Paul preferred to reply with a falsehood, which brought him at once to the object ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... there on the landing Guest hesitated for a moment or two, an undefinable feeling of dread having attacked him; there was a curious ringing in the ears, and his heart beat with ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... towards it in dread unutterable, an undefined sense of evil filling her sinking heart; mingling with which, came, with a rush of terror, a fear of that other undefinable evil—the evil Mrs. Hare had declared was foreboded by ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Schopenhauer, and this helps us to realise the difficulty of expressing it. What thinker will reduce the quality to intellectual symbols? Until that is done, however, Philosophy of Art must remain a philosophy of the Undefined, and the Undefinable! ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... eccentricities over unknown geniuses, and a single quality or power is not enough to arouse my enthusiasm. It is possible that no master ever painted a buttercup like this one, or the fringe of a robe like that one; that this poet has a unique subtlety, and that an undefinable music. I am still unconvinced, tho the man who can not see it, we are told, should at once retire to the place where there is wailing and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... precipitating itself upon the brig; there was a moment of undefinable anguish; the men forsook their poles and flocked to the stern in spite ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... of Paredes and Doctor Groom, held downstairs by Graham; of the county authorities hurrying to seize this evidence that would convict him; and he realized that his duty and his excuse were clear. He understood that just now he had been captured by a force undefinable in terms of the world he knew. For a moment he eluded the stealthy fleshless hands of its impalpable skirmishers. He reached impulsively out to the dead man. He was about to place his fingers in the pocket, which, after all was said and done, held ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... fell upon the woman's soul. It was like a heavy nightmare weight that might only be felt, not seen, and could not be shaken off. But the Countess de Mattos had experienced this undefinable misery before, when the reaction came after taking too large a dose of chlorodyne with her "solace." She hoped that it was merely this now—that it was no real warning of trouble or ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... that she might some day appear before the throne of God even more chaste than the Virgin Mary herself,—Grandet, struck with pity, would say as he looked at her, "Poor Nanon!" The exclamation was always followed by an undefinable look cast upon him in return by the old servant. The words, uttered from time to time, formed a chain of friendship that nothing ever parted, and to which each exclamation added a link. Such compassion ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... something wanting, as I 've said— That undefinable 'Je ne scais quoi,' Which, for what I know, may of yore have led To Homer's Iliad, since it drew to Troy The Greek Eve, Helen, from the Spartan's bed; Though on the whole, no doubt, the Dardan boy Was much inferior to King Menelaus:— ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... relative has been developed in modern times through the influence of the sciences of observation. Those sciences reveal types of life evanescing into each other by inexpressible refinements of change. Things pass into their opposites by accumulation of undefinable quantities. The growth of those sciences consists in a continual analysis of facts of rough and general observation into groups of facts ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... mirages hold out their allurements from all directions; the sombre walls of villages present the appearance of battlemented fortresses rising up from the mirror-like surface of silvery lakes, and orchards and groves seem shadowy, undefinable objects floating motionless above the earth. The telegraph poles traversing the plain in a long, straight line until lost to view in the hazy distance, appear to be suspended in mid-air; camels, horses, and all moving objects more than a mile ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... introduces his striking sketch of the poet by a reference to the model, that has its natural place in the museum named from the great sculptor whose genius had flung into the clay the features of a character so unlike his own. The bust, says the Danish critic, at first sight impresses one with an undefinable classic grace; on closer examination the restlessness of a life is reflected in a brow over which clouds seem to hover, but clouds from which we look for lightnings. The dominant impression of the whole is that of some irresistible power (Unwiderstehlichkeit). Thorwaldsen, ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... houses of the noblesse and priests, and, after a horrid mockery of judicial condemnation, execute them on the spot. The tocsin is rung, alarm guns are fired, the streets resound with fearful shrieks, and an undefinable sensation of terror seizes on one's heart. I feel that I have committed an imprudence in venturing to Paris; but the barriers are now shut, and I must abide the event. I know not to what these proscriptions ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... undefinable apprehension, young Peveril now struck the spurs into his jaded steed, and forcing him down the broken and steep path, at a pace which set safety at defiance, he arrived at the village of Martindale-Moultrassie, eagerly desirous to ascertain the cause of this ominous eclipse. ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... nearly sixty feet high, and if it threw itself upon the brig she would be crushed. There was an undefinable moment of suspense, and the crew retreated backward, abandoning their posts despite ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... continued on generalities. By one of those mysterious unknown and undefinable faculties, Mademoiselle Cormon found in her brain, under the pressure of her desire to be agreeable, all the phrases and opinions of the Chevalier de Valois. It was like a duel in which the devil himself pointed the pistol. Never was ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... of editing. Some sermons, a little volume of Thoughts on Private Devotion, and another on the Epistle to the Romans, are nearly all that he has left of his own. Novelty of manner or thought in them there is none, still less anything brilliant or sharp in observation or style; but there is an undefinable sense, in their calm, severe pages, of a deep and serious mind dwelling on deep and very serious things. It is impossible not to wish that a man who could so write and impress people might have had ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... marriage discussed with a strange feeling, a nameless undefinable regret. It seemed to her that George Fairfax was the only person in her small world who really understood her, the only man who could have been her friend and counsellor. It was a foolish fancy, no doubt, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... it indefinitely, you cannot isolate it from its fuel and keep it by itself. Even so in the human being there is not any soul which can be isolated and go on living eternally but the analogy of the flame still holds good. Unseizable though a flame may be, and undefinable as substance, it is not unreasonable to trim a fire and make a flame rise above its fuel, free from smoke, clear and pure. If it were a conscious flame, such might ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... Adj. uncertain; casual; random &c. (aimless) 621; changeable &c. 149. doubtful, dubious; indecisive; unsettled, undecided, undetermined; in suspense, open to discussion; controvertible; in question &c. (inquiry) 461. vague; indeterminate, indefinite; ambiguous, equivocal; undefined, undefinable; confused &c. (indistinct) 447; mystic, oracular; dazed. perplexing &c. v.; enigmatic, paradoxical, apocryphal, problematical, hypothetical; experimental &c. 463. unpredictable, unforeseeable (unknowable) 519. fallible, questionable, precarious, slippery, ticklish, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... I heard the distant strains of the organ, a sad harmony to an undefinable chant, the wail of a soul longing to break these earthly bonds. I listened with every sense, scarcely breathing; plunged, like Captain Nemo, in that musical ecstasy, which was drawing him in spirit to the end ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... belongs to some innate temperament; it does not necessarily imply a particular bent, because that may possibly be the effect of circumstances: but, without question, the peculiar quality is inborn, and particular to the individual. All hear and see much alike; but there is an undefinable though wide difference between the ear of the musician, or the eye of the painter, compared with the hearing and seeing organs of ordinary men; and it is in something like that difference in which genius consists. Genius is, however, an ingredient of mind more easily described by ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... too much for him, and always gained his purposes without giving Quirk any handle of dissatisfaction. In fact, Quirk was thoroughly afraid of Gammon, and Gammon knew it. In the present instance, an undefinable but increasing suspicion and discomfort forced him presently ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... one of these evenings that I suddenly understood what was the cause of the undefinable change that I had noticed in her manner some time before. In the previous week the company had held a court dinner, and that was the evening when the alderman introduced his son—"My son, the captain," ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... indicated and saw there a very tall, awkward boy, pouring over a badly worn book, and making notes on a slip of yellow paper. He wore glasses, and possessed that queerly undefinable personality, usually ascribed to the gawky boy, or he who is ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... longed for some one to be with me; then I began to wonder whom I would prefer for a companion, and thought of all my friends, even to old Madre Moreno, but none of them seemed to be the one to break the new and undefinable loneliness. Suddenly the form of the fair stranger, with her bright eyes and expressive face, came up before my fancy, and I exclaimed, "Yes, it is she; it ...
— The Beautiful Eyes of Ysidria • Charles A. Gunnison
... the time the subtle inequality in Hugh's character. Perhaps she loved him all the better for it. Perhaps she knew that if he had been without a certain undefinable weakness he would not have been drawn towards her strength. She was stronger than he, and perhaps she loved him more than she could have loved ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... obviously from the land to the rear of the party, and others quite as obviously from the water in their front. And, most disturbing consideration of all, every one of them was absolutely unfamiliar, therefore in some vague, undefinable fashion, the more alarming. This effect was quickly made manifest by the agitated murmurings of the Indians, and the haste with which they replenished the dying fire, heaping on fuel with such a lavish hand that, for the space of a few yards all ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... without the evidence of your own senses. Let me only say this, it was not so much what we saw or heard (in which you might fairly suppose that we were the dupes of our own excited fancy, or the victims of imposture in others) that drove us away, as it was an undefinable terror which seized both of us whenever we passed by the door of a certain unfurnished room, in which we neither saw nor heard anything. And the strangest marvel of all was, that for once in my life I agreed with my wife, ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... came, a wild, remorseful flood. The girl swayed upon the couch, torn by the emotions that lashed her cruelly. Thornly stood apart. Something undefinable held him to his place. He recalled the first day he had met this strange girl upon the Hills and her tears then; but these were different. In a subtle, unspeakable way he realized that something startling had ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... quite apart from the claims of his work as literature, there was also an added element which, with all their genius, the Brontes did not possess—the element of charm, the petit carillon, to which Renan attributed his own success in literature: undefinable, always, this last!—but supreme.[1] There is scarcely a letter of Stevenson's that is without it, it plays about the slender volumes of essays or of travel that we know so well; but it is present not only in the lighter books and tales, not only in the ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... benefits; that is, benefits for which language contains no expression. So that, after all, we know not what it is we are to hope for. And how can we feel a hope or even a wish for any object that is undefinable? How can priests incessantly speak to us of things of which they, at the same time, acknowledge it is impossible for ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... up—not exactly in a night, but in a marvellously short space of time. There was more of interest about it, too, than about the Aladdin buildings; for whereas the latter were evolved magically out of that mysterious and undefinable region termed Nowhere, the Miss Robinson edifice came direct from smoky, romantic London, without ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... admonishes us of other delightful things; it is silent—it is awful—it is holy; but its silence is beautiful, and with wordless eloquence it speaks unto our enraptured bosoms of deep, eternal, unimaginable repose! it infuses into our breasts undefinable ideas and sensations; it appears to our enchanted imaginations an emblem meet of the grand dream of eternity, and our spirits seem on the verge of quitting earth, in thrilling contemplations on the islands of that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... uttered no protest. He moved about wrapped in undefinable awe. For he believed he had seen Rosendo lifted from the bed of death. And no one might tell him that it was not by the same power that long ago had raised the dead man of Nain. Carmen had not spoken of the incident again; and something laid ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... wondrous a field for the exercise of his perfected faculty; and I saw then how in the real, the great collector's appreciations the keenest scientific perception is suffused with imaginative sensibility, and how it's to the latter undefinable quality that in the last ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... resting-place, and the scalding tears dashed down his cheek in still more ardent torrents. He had no distinct remembrance of what had so lately happened; but characters flitted before him as in a theatre, in a dream, dim and shadowy, yet full of mysterious and undefinable interest; and then there came a horrible idea across his mind that his glittering youth was gone and wasted; and then there was a dark whisper of treachery, and dissimulation, and dishonour; and then he sobbed as if his very heart were cracking. ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... inexplicable scene, engrossed the inventive faculties of all there, till they were thoroughly tired of their wild and aimless guesses. Eight o'clock chimed—nine—ten—and they were all, Edouard especially, working themselves into a complete panic of undefinable apprehension, when, to their great relief, M. de Veron's carriage drew up before the door. The first person to alight was M. Bourdon, a notary of eminence; next M. de Veron, who handed out Madame Carson; and all ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... you!" Lanrivain had said; and I was overcome by the almost blasphemous frivolity of suggesting to any living being that Kerfol was the place for him. "Is it possible that any one could not See—?" I wondered. I did not finish the thought: what I meant was undefinable. I stood up and wandered toward the gate. I was beginning to want to know more; not to see more—I was by now so sure it was not a question of seeing—but to feel more: feel all the place had to communicate. ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... the excitement in the air, the strange, laden undercurrent of spiritual salvation-something esoteric, undefinable, the ecstasy of a million souls pulsing to the throb of a supreme moment. He drew back, ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... had already told regarding his mythical friend who had at last a commercial wireless "televue," as he called it on the spur of the moment, when Jane, the aged caretaker, announced Dr. Scott. The new doctor was a youthfully dressed man, clean-shaven, but with an undefinable air of being much older than his smooth face led one to suppose. As he had a large practice, he said, he would beg our pardon for interrupting ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... he noticed Jonathan Wild at a little distance from him, eyeing him with a look of the most savage satisfaction. The thief-taker's throat was bound up with thick folds of linen, and his face had a ghastly and cadaverous look, which communicated an undefinable and horrible ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... always felt that, on the day when she showed too open a preference, Mr. Royall might, as she phrased it, make her "pay for it." How, she did not know; and her fear was the greater because it was undefinable. If she had been accepting the attentions of one of the village youths she would have been less apprehensive: Mr. Royall could not prevent her marrying when she chose to. But everybody knew that ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... and blundering colleague, had been watching the prisoner very closely for the last moment or two, conscious of a subtle, undefinable change that had come over the man during those few seconds while he, Chauvelin, had thought him dying. The pose was certainly the old familiar one, the head erect, the hand clenched, the eyes looking through and beyond the stone walls; but there was an air of listlessness in the stoop of ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... clouds, yet restrained by some galling chain from the heaven it sought to enter. And then I asked myself, What is the secret of this mysterious power of music; where shall we look for the cause of those undefinable yet overwhelming emotions which it never fails to excite? A hopeless question it seemed, one which the philosophers of all ages have failed to solve, perhaps because they have not troubled themselves to inquire very seriously about it; and again, perhaps it has baffled them as ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... it the languid mind of the convalescent, almost the heart of a young girl whose tears are ready to flow, though she is smiling a little at her own sad dreams. It seems to me that Strauss must have a secret affection for this work, which owes its inspiration to the undefinable impressions of convalescence. His fever fell asleep in it, and certain passages are full of the caressing touch of nature, and recall Berlioz's Les Troyens. But too often the music is superficial and conventional, and the tyranny of Wagner makes itself felt—a rare ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... speaking she had gone to the door, and she went out without looking back. A moment later, she was by Gianluca's side. She saw that what Don Teodoro had said was true. There was an undefinable change in his features since the previous day, and at the first sight of it her heart stood still an instant and the blood left her face, so that she felt very cold. She kept her back to the light, that he might not see that she was disturbed, and while she asked him how he was, her hands ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... sparkling eyes they were, made to seem smaller and brighter by a constant girlish twinkle that softened and lighted up their laughter. They were neither brown eyes nor blue eyes, but were of an undefinable, changing gray, a gray that was not a color, but a light! Emotion found expression therein in the flame of fever, pleasure in the flashing rays of a sort of intoxication, passion in phosphorescence. Her short, turned-up nose, with large, dilated, palpitating nostrils, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... instant the red sail, the long, keen, black shell, the naked forms of the fierce Illanums, were mixed in one undefinable blot on the ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... fled. O, who shall count his sorrows? who shall make An estimate of his deep, burning woes, And place them all in order, rank on rank? Language is weak to tell the heart's deep, wrongs. We think, and muse, and in our endless thought We strive to grasp, with all the mind's vast strength, The undefinable extent of spirit grief, And fail to accomplish ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... was all. It was enough, it was too much! Mme Derline was seized with a feeling of undefinable confusion. It was a combination of fear and pleasure, of joy and trouble, of satisfied vanity and wounded modesty. Her dressing-gown was a little open; she folded it over with a sort of violence, and crossed it upon, ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... of this depressing waste was the sight of the Bunner Sisters' window. Its panes were always well-washed, and though their display of artificial flowers, bands of scalloped flannel, wire hat-frames, and jars of home-made preserves, had the undefinable greyish tinge of objects long preserved in the show-case of a museum, the window revealed a background of orderly counters and white-washed walls in pleasant contrast ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... her, too, an undefinable something, like the shadow of future fate, a something almost impossible to describe, and yet distinctly appreciable to all who saw her and lived with her. It came upon her especially when she was silent and abstracted, when she was kneeling in her place in the choir, ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... public opinion! For whatever he does, he assumes accountability to the American people! For whatever he omits, he expects to be brought to the high bar of public opinion! And this is thought enough for a limited, restrained, republican government! an undefined, undefinable, ideal responsibility ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... Latin. The latter part, the "Miseries of Opium," I had most unaccountably always neglected to read. Again and again, when my increasing debility had threatened to bring my studies to an abrupt conclusion, I had meditated this experiment, but an undefinable and shadowy fear had as often stayed my hand. But now that I knew that unless I could by artificial stimuli obtain a sudden increase of strength I must STARVE, I no longer hesitated. I was desperate; I believed that something ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... so presumptuous as to venture an answer to any of these questions except perhaps the last. As to that, I appeal to our consciousness, to our innate conviction that there does exist something, some virtue, some sentiment, however undefinable in terms, holding men together in society despite their natural selfishness, and without which they would fall apart. It is this virtue, this ligament of society, that we call justice. We feel that the word is not a mere word, but ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... bowed upon her hand; recalling the scattered fragments of the sonorous verses, and wondering why it was that, when each line had seemed so perfect in itself, and every thought so pure and noble in its purport and conception, the whole should have left upon her mind such an undefinable ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... threatened her maternal peace. Dick was not a boy any longer; he had outgrown his hobbledehoy ways; the slight sandy moustache that he so proudly caressed was not a greater proof of his manhood than the undefinable change that had passed ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... hopelessly forward, praying in vain for an end of misery. Out of such a boyhood there came—as what else could come?—a manhood all imperfect, clothed with gloom, haunted by horror, and familiar with undefinable terrors which have weighed upon my heart until I have cried to myself that it would break—until I have almost prayed that it would break and thereby free me from the bondage of my pitiless master, Woe! To-day walled ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... daughter. The heart of Allan Cameron bounded and fluttered in his breast, as he advanced to salute this beautiful mountain-nymph. He had braved, undaunted, the brow of man when darkened with the frown of deadly hostility, but he shrank with a new and undefinable tremor before the blushing smile of a youthful maiden's cheek and eye. His self-possession seemed for once to have forsaken him; and had Macpherson been acquainted with the human heart, he must have seen that a new ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... thoughts were profound, saluted them all with reverence and gave them a comprehensive answer, saying: Be it heard! This universe existed only in the first divine idea yet unexpanded, as if involved in darkness, imperceptible, undefinable, undiscoverable by reason, and undiscovered by revelation, as if it were wholly immersed in sleep; then the sole, self-existing power, himself undiscovered, but making this world discernible, with five elements and other principles of ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... was a sound heard throughout the village of 53 houses. The natives had been warned of what would take place, but doubted the prediction. When it did occur they looked upon me as the cause of the Sun's being 'very sick and going to bed.' They were thoroughly alarmed, and overwhelmed with an undefinable dread." ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... enjoy. But for the arms of the City of London itself no authority can be adduced, and in the opinion of many none is required, "seeing," as an old writer on the subject says, "that of things armorial the very essence is undefinable antiquity; a sort of perpetual old age, without record of childhood." That the arms which the Corporation now use differ from those it first employed is freely admitted, but comparatively few are ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... ruled with iron and steam, bullied into a yield of three hundred and fifty thousand bushels, where even when the land was resting, unploughed, unharrowed, and unsown, the wheat came up—troubled her, and even at times filled her with an undefinable terror. To her mind there was something inordinate about it all; something almost unnatural. The direct brutality of ten thousand acres of wheat, nothing but wheat as far as the eye could see, stunned her a little. The one-time writing-teacher of a young ladies' seminary, with her pretty deer-like ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... undefinable cause, I at once conceived for this man a strange feeling of dislike. It was he of whom Lincoln had spoken, and who was likely to be my rival for the captaincy. Was it this that rendered him repulsive? No. There was a cause beyond. In him I recognised one of those abandoned ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... conceals nothing—who changes men into phantoms, the most ordinary scenes of life into mysterious apparitions; I had almost said who changes this world into another that does not seem to be and yet is the same. Whence has he drawn that undefinable light, those flashes of electric rays, those reflections of unknown stars that like an enigma fill us with wonder? What did this dreamer, this visionary, see in the dark? What is the secret that tormented his soul? What did this painter ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... when the black thorns and other hardy shrubs that in some placas clothed its rocky sides were green, to view the river sparkling below you in the sun, as it flung itself over two or three cataracts of great depth and boldness, filled the mind with those undefinable sensations of pleasure inseparable from a contemplation of the sublimities of nature. Nor did it possess less interest when beheld in the winter storm. Well do we remember, though then ignorant of our own motives, when we have, in the turmoil of the elements, climbed ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... One may say that to be reared a member of an Establishment is in itself a lesson of religious moderation, and a help towards [xxiii] culture and harmonious perfection. Instead of battling for his own private forms for expressing the inexpressible and defining the undefinable, a man takes those which have commended themselves most to the religious life of his nation; and while he may be sure that within those forms the religious side of his own nature may find its satisfaction, he has leisure and composure ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... frequent appeals to the Deity, somehow or other struck the false note at the very start, and before any of us guessed or knew anything at all. Something moved secretly between his words, a shadow veiling the stars, destroying the peace of our little camp, and touching us all personally with an undefinable sense of horror ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... water were motionless. They were gradually sinking down. There was an irresistible power dragging them down and ingulfing them alive. All five arose. They looked at one another with terror. They grew dizzy. They felt an undefinable dread of the abyss! But suddenly the launch arose perpendicularly. Her prow was higher than the whirling waves; the speed with which she was moving hurled her beyond the centre of attraction, and escaping by the tangent of this circumference which ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... at last, as if he would speak; and Maggie, bending low to catch the faintest sound, heard him utter the name of "Rose." In Maggie's bosom there was no feeling for the stranger save that of pity, and yet that one word "Rose" thrilled her with a strange undefinable emotion, awaking at once a yearning desire to know something of her who bore that beautiful name, and who to the young man was undoubtedly the one in ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... for these two girls—well, I am even more in love than you are, Philip. The elder is the handsomer, perhaps; she is very handsome; but your favourite is my favourite. Lois is lovely. There is a strange, fresh, simple, undefinable charm about the girl that makes one her captive. Even me, a woman. She wins upon me daily with her sweet unconscious ways. But nevertheless I am uneasy when I remember what I am here for, and what you are expecting. ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... extract just given from his Journal, it will be perceived that, in Byron's own opinion, a character which, like his, admitted of so many contradictory comparisons, could not be otherwise than wholly undefinable itself. It will be found, however, on reflection, that this very versatility, which renders it so difficult to fix, "ere it change," the fairy fabric of his character, is, in itself, the true clue through all that fabric's mazes,—is in itself the solution of whatever was most dazzling in his ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... his part, with trust, and tenderness, and tears on hers! A sad, sad day it was for Fanny Layton, the first she had ever known that was ever heralded by sorrow's messenger. How she strove to dwell upon Edward Morton's words, "It will not be for long;" and banish from her heart those nameless, undefinable fears which would not away at her bidding. The sky looked no longer blue—the green earth no longer glad; and traces of tears, the bitterest she had ever shed, were on that poor girl's cheek, as she went forth to meet her beloved, for the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... reducible to rules, and that there is a rule for everything. So far is it from being true that the finest breath of fancy is a definable thing, that the plainest common sense is only what Mr. Locke would have called a mixed mode, subject to a particular sort of acquired and undefinable tact. It is asked, "If you do not know the rule by which a thing is done, how can you be sure of doing it a second time?" And the answer is, "If you do not know the muscles by the help of which you walk, how is it you do not fall down at every step you take?" In art, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... war began. It was only George he came to see? She brought out her work and began to sew. He would not come: only George was fit to be his friend. Why should he heed her poor old father, or her?—with the undefinable awe of an unbred mind for his power and wealth of culture. And yet—something within her at the moment rose up royal—his equal. He knew her, as she might be! Between them there was something deeper than the shallow kind greeting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... him, and when he walked, she would lead him so carefully, removing all the ugly pegs from his boots, and watching to see that he did not stub his toes, as she was always doing in her headlong haste. "What a great good man he is," she kept repeating, while at the same time she felt an undefinable interest in the Swedish child, whom at that very moment, Grace Atherton was cursing in her heart as the cause ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... so weird in its feeling of cut-offness as that of a night camp in the heart of the bush. The flickering camp-fires draw all that is human and tangible into its charmed circle, and without, all is undefinable darkness and uncertainty. Yet it was in this night camp among the dark pines, with even the stars shut out, that we learnt that out-bush "Houselessness" need not mean "Homelessness"—a discovery that destroyed all hope that "this would sicken ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... 'Again the undefinable spell that seemed to attach to the fascinating Adele, filled my mind with reveries of wondrous interest. What was her part in this drama that was enacting so close beside me? Was she the victim or the enchantress? During the long ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... she resumed, covering her face with her hands, "why I behaved so proudly to you, from the very first day you entered the house? It was because, when I passed you on the lawn, before ever you entered the house, I felt a strange, undefinable attraction towards you, which continued, although I could not account for it and would not yield to it. I was heartily annoyed at it. But you see it was of no use—here I am. That was what made me so fierce, too, when I first found ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... the country. He reflected, however, that he was sharing the common lot of husbands, who proverbially mistake the early ardors of housekeeping for a sign of settled domesticity. Alexa, at any rate, was refuting his theory as inconsiderately as a seedling defeats the gardener's expectations. An undefinable change had come over her. In one sense it was a happy one, since she had grown, if not handsomer, at least more vivid and expressive; her beauty had become more communicable: it was as though she had learned the conscious exercise ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... family, with the addition of a little boyfriend, gathered together in a very purposeful and alarming way in the library There was about them an undefinable air of the chase, for they were all well-booted and belted, and Peggy had a large clasp-knife dangling at her waist. "It is for the hare," she said, "when we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... tables, her readiness to receive friends. And yet, amidst all this interest of character, this happy pleasantry, this seeming contentment, there is one group pauses ere it arrives at the house,—dare not enter. The distinction seems undefinable to us; but they, poor wretches, feel it deeply. Shame rankles deep, to their very heart's core. They doubt their position, hesitate at the door, and, after several nervous attempts to enter, fall back,—gather round ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... its little heralds sweeping across the face of night. First came a little motion of cold air—it was dead-still before; then an undefinable freshness; then a very slight but rather grateful smell from the soil of the conscious earth. Next twittered from the bush one ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... It was in the Meeker front room that he first realized his mundane existence was in danger. He could give no description of what happened beyond the fact that suddenly he was bathed in a cold, revolting air. It hung about him with the undefinable feel and smell of death. A rotten air, he described it, and could think of nothing better; remaining, he thought, for half a minute, filling him with instinctive abject ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various |
