"Unintelligible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unthread the mazes and mysteries of those incomprehensible depths of diabolical worship and intertwined beauty and honor, now known only from trebly diminished mythologic reflection. Perhaps some of those undecipherable hieroglyphs of the East are not so unintelligible to you now as they would be if translated. Do you, for that matter, fully understand why a Hindu yoghi torments himself for thirty years? I observe that the great majority of our good, kind missionaries have no glimmering ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... unwelcome. The question of sex was still distasteful to her. But she bade herself, sternly, not to shrink. For without some reasoned comprehension of it—as now dawned on her—the ways of human beings, of animals, of plants and, so some say, even of minerals, are unintelligible, arbitrary, and nonsensical. It is the push of life itself, essential, fundamental, which makes us "feel in that way"—the push of spirit yearning to be clothed upon with flesh, made visible and given its chance to enter the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... income. The possessions of the first, and their annual rental, are universally known, and concealment as to them is impossible or sure of detection; the gains of the last are entirely secret, and wrapped up, even to the owner, in books or accounts, generally unintelligible in all cases but those of considerable merchants—to all but the persons who prepared them. Whoever is practically acquainted with human nature will at once perceive the immense effect which this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... performances then began. There was no scenery, nor stage appliances; the descriptions of the chorus or of the actors took their place. The dialogue and choruses are given in a nasal recitative, accompanied by the mouth-organ, flute, drum, and other classical instruments, and are utterly unintelligible. The ancient poetry is full of puns and plays upon words, and it was with no little difficulty that, with the assistance of a man of letters, I prepared beforehand the arguments of the ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... given ambiguous or unintelligible sentence transparent, the following suggestions are recommended." The words in italics are unnecessary, since what is ambiguous is unintelligible. Then who has ever heard ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... Roman Catholic was burnt in this reign for holding that religion; though two wretched victims suffered for heresy. One, a woman named JOAN BOCHER, for professing some opinions that even she could only explain in unintelligible jargon. The other, a Dutchman, named VON PARIS, who practised as a surgeon in London. Edward was, to his credit, exceedingly unwilling to sign the warrant for the woman's execution: shedding tears before he did so, and telling Cranmer, who urged him to do it (though ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... the diamond, and the padded ropes and prefer it to the language of civilization. But such diction is always limited in its range of acquaintances and followers. A current bit of slang in Memphis may be unintelligible in Pittsburg. A colloquial ephemeralism in a city may be undecipherable in the country districts twenty-five miles away. A large percentage of the athletic jargon of the sporting club and field is enigmatical to the ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... lately, I fear I have missed a letter or two of yours: I hope this will have better fortune; for, almost unintelligible, as it is, you will want even so ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... selected early English, containing no words but such as are obsolete and unintelligible. Pour this into about double the quantity of entirely new English, which must have never been used before, and which you must compose yourself, fresh as it is wanted. Mix these together thoroughly till they assume a colour quite different from ...
— Every Man His Own Poet - Or, The Inspired Singer's Recipe Book • Newdigate Prizeman
... that it is unintelligible. Decoded, it meant that I, whose betting pseudonym is Sanguine, wished to invest with Messrs. Lure, commission agents (not bookmakers, no, not for a moment), whose telegraphic address is "Pactolus, London," a sum of ten pounds ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... Journal (26 February 1850), Browning imagined that his shorthand was Roman type of unusual clearness: "Marston says that Browning, before publishing Sordello, sent it to him to read, saying that this time I the public should not accuse him at any rate of being unintelligible." What follows in the Journal is of interest, but can hardly be taken as true to the letter: "Browning's system of composition is to write down on a slate, in prose, what he wants to say, and then turn it into verse, striving after the greatest amount ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... nature of the proceedings around him. The reaction was too sudden for a mind that had been broken down so long, and harrassed so painfully, by impressions of remorse and guilt. The consequence was, that he had forgot, for a time, the nature of his situation—all appeared unintelligible confusion about him,—he could see a multitude of faces, and the people, all agitated by some great cause of commotion, and that was, then, all he could understand ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... her face arrested him. Her eye had fallen on the round visage of Jacky, and a beaming smile now lighted up and beautified the countenance which had so recently been distorted with passion. Uttering some unintelligible phrase in Gaelic, she held out her skinny arms towards the child, as if entreating him to come to her. Strange to say, Jacky did not run away or scream with fright as she approached him and took him in her arms. Whether it was that he was too much petrified with horror to offer any resistance, ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... something unintelligible, blushing furiously, with her eyes riveted to her knitting. ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... Hand in Use. The [Dancers [2]] on our Stages are very faulty in this Kind; and what they mean by writhing themselves into such Postures, as it would be a Pain for any of the Spectators to stand in, and yet hope to please those Spectators, is unintelligible. Mr. Prince has a Genius, if he were encouraged, would prompt them to better things. In all the Dances he invents, you see he keeps close to the Characters he represents. He does not hope to please by making his Performers ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... difficult thing to deal with, I feel more and more, hourly, even to the point of almost ceasing to write; not only every feeling I have, but, of late, even every word I use, being alike inconceivable to the insolence, and unintelligible amidst the slang, of the modern London writers. Only in the last magazine I took up, I found an article by Mr. Goldwin Smith on the Jews (of which the gist—as far as it had any—was that we had better give up reading the Bible), and in the text of which I found the word 'tribal' ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... increase my despair and make me the more willing to die. As the day wore on, my anguish became more intense, but I managed to mislead those about me by uttering a word now and then, and feigning to read a newspaper, which to me, however, appeared an unintelligible jumble of type. My brain was in a ferment. It felt as if pricked by a million needles at white heat. My whole body felt as though it would be torn apart by the terrific nervous strain under ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... was immediately followed by a period which aimed rather at being imposing than at convincing. Instead of being thorough and clear, it tried to be dazzling, hyperbolical, and, in a special degree, unintelligible: instead of seeking truth, it intrigued. Philosophy could make no progress in this fashion; and at last the whole school and its method became bankrupt. For the effrontery of Hegel and his fellows came to such a pass,—whether because they talked such ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Bird, and where there are honly two rooms, 'eat with one stove between the walls, their room is always ready. Do me the pleasure!" He set the door open, and bowed Northwick in. "Baptiste!" he called to the driver over his shoulder, "take you' 'orse to the stable." He added a long queue of unintelligible French to his English, and the ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, To them I may have owed another gift, Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood, In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world Is lighten'd:—that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on, Until, the breath of this corporeal frame, And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... torture must have been inflicted by their presence upon a young woman who had always been sensitive above all things to the laws of personal modesty and reserve. Their course jests would no doubt be unintelligible to her, which would be an alleviation; but their coarse laughter, their revolting touch, their impure looks, would be an endless incessant misery. We are told that she indignantly bestowed a hearty buffet on the cheek of a tailor ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... them Brazilians. As they passed, Martin hailed them in an unsteady voice. They pulled up suddenly and drew pistols from their holsters; but on seeing only a fair youth armed with a bow, they replaced their weapons, and with a look of surprise rode up and assailed him with a volley of unintelligible Portuguese. ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Hindustani a popular variant of Hindu/Urdu, is spoken widely throughout northern India note: 24 languages each spoken by a million or more persons; numerous other languages and dialects, for the most part mutually unintelligible ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Blacas, a knight of Provence, died, the great Sordello chanted one of his most fiery hymns, bidding the princes of Christendom flock round and eat the heart of the dead lord. 'Let Rambaude des Baux,' cries the bard, with a sarcasm that is clearly meant, but at this distance almost unintelligible, 'take also a good piece, for she is fair and good and truly virtuous; let her keep it well who knows so well to husband her own weal.' But the poets were not always adverse to the house of Baux. Fouquet, the beautiful and gentle melodist whom Dante ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... as heard of the burthen and the mystery of all this unintelligible world. His flowers and trees and birds have never bothered themselves with Spinoza. He himself sings more like a bird than any other poet, because it never occurred to him, as to Goethe, that he ought to do so. He pours himself out in sincere joy and thankfulness. When we compare Spenser's imitations ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... He could not make himself understood: things were therefore brought to him continually which he had not asked for; and often it happened that what he really wanted he could not obtain, because all his efforts to name it were unintelligible. A violent nervous irritation, besides, affected him from the unsettling of the equilibrium in the different functions of his nature; weakness in one organ being made more palpable to him by disproportionate strength ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... something unintelligible as he gazed into his glass, but did not look at her. Then she filled his glass to the brim, and as he still did not drink and did not even stretch his hand out to take it, she took hold of it, sipped a little, and ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... correspondents. Figure to yourself a bald-headed personage, about forty years of age, near seven feet high, deaf as a post, stammering and making convulsive efforts to express a sentence of five words, which, after all, his gibberish made unintelligible. His dress was as eccentric as his person was singular, and his manners corresponded with both. He called himself Baron von Bulow, and I saw him afterwards, in the autumn of 1797, at Paris, with the same accoutrements and the same jargon, assuming an air of diplomatic mystery, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... walls. They simply admit that I am Herr im Hause, and act on this conviction. There is no grumbling about my habitudes and whims. If I choose to dine on fire and brimstone, they will cook it for me to their best skill, thinking only that I am an unintelligible mortal, facheux to deal with, but not to be dealt with in any other way. My own ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... yet I can never utter an important statement without doing so very slowly, and repeating it too, lest the foreign accent, which is distinctly perceptible in all Europeans, should render the sense unintelligible. In this I follow the example of the Bechuana orators, who, on important matters, always speak slowly, deliberately, and with reiteration. The capabilities of this language may be inferred from the fact that the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... distinguishable by the hump upon his back, than by the drollery of his gestures, and the seeming humour of his speeches, which he was very fond of exhibiting, as we supposed, for our entertainment. But, unfortunately, we could not understand him; the language spoken here being wholly unintelligible to us. It appeared to me to be different from that spoken by the inhabitants of the more northern parts of this country, whom I met with in my first voyage; which is not extraordinary, since those we now saw, and those we then ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... brilliant period was immediately followed by another period, which aimed at being imposing rather than convincing. Instead of being solid and clear, it aimed at being brilliant and hyperbolical, and, in particular, unintelligible; instead of seeking truth, it intrigued. Under these circumstances philosophy could make no progress. Ultimately the whole school and its method became bankrupt. For the audacious, sophisticated nonsense on the one hand, and the unconscionable ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... application of mathematics to the study of nature we attain a mundane science, which is certain, no doubt, and which makes constant progress,[1] but which does not satisfy, since it reveals nothing of the infinite, of the whole, without which the parts remain unintelligible. Hence all natural philosophy together is not worth an hour's toil. Pascal consoles himself for our ignorance concerning external things by the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... dressing-gown and together we invested the patient in it. Then we dragged him, very limp, but not entirely unresisting, out of bed and stood him on his feet. He opened his eyes and blinked owlishly first at one and then at the other of us, and mumbled a few unintelligible words of protest; regardless of which, we thrust his feet into slippers and endeavoured to make him walk. At first he seemed unable to stand, and we had to support him by his arms as we urged him forward; but presently his trailing legs began to make definite ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... here unintelligible, unless he here means the range of mountains which bound Hindostan, particularly on the north-west, including Cashmir and Cabul; which seems probable as immediately followed in the text by the Punjab, or country on the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... with abundant goodness and beauty, unrolls itself before her eyes; and she learns, in her heart of hearts, the lesson, that the foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying; to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... blacks, in their conversation with the settler, I have introduced to give some idea of the unintelligible and periphrastic jargon the whites have to adopt to make themselves understood. And so accustomed do the squatters, and their men, become in its use that they naturally fall into it whenever they experience any difficulty in making themselves ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... Lady Lydiard repeated, as if the expression was perfectly unintelligible to her. "I don't think you have had much experience of dogs, ma'am." She turned to Isabel, and embraced her tenderly. "Give me a kiss, my dear—you don't know how wretched I have been since you left me." She looked back ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... sovereignty: with haughty air, And studied mien, in semicircular throne Enclos'd, she deals around her dread commands; Behind her (dazzling sight!) in order rang'd, Pile above pile, crystalline vessels shine: Attendant slaves with eager strides advance, And, after homage paid, bawl out aloud Words unintelligible, noise confus'd: She knows the jargon sounds, and straight describes, In characters mysterious, words obscure: More legible are algebraic signs, Or mystic figures by magicians drawn, When they invoke the infernal ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... spirit! Nude thou never wert. Not from Heaven nor near it Breathed thy cubic heart In profuse stairs of unintelligible art. ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... dame muttered something unintelligible. Then, 'She's in the back part,' she said, 'but she'll not wish to see you. Don't blame me if she pins ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... but continued to glare wildly at the faces bent over him. He occasionally groaned and muttered a few unintelligible words. ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... and communicated with our party. They carried spears with them, and each of our gentlemen had their fowling-pieces: the appearance of Bundell, who on these occasions always took his clothes off, perhaps gave them greater confidence. After some vociferous and unintelligible parley, one of our gentlemen, in order to give them further cause for the surprise which they had already manifested to a great extent, unadvisedly fired his fowling-piece; upon which, as might be expected, they became distrustful and frightened, and, fixing their spears ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... fear, that to a modern British auditory, trained in the school of Locke, much of ancient thought, heathen as well as Christian, may seem so utterly the product of the imagination, so utterly without any corresponding reality in the universe, as to look like mere unintelligible madness. Still, I must try; only entreating my hearers to consider, that how much soever we may honour Locke and his great Scotch followers, we are not bound to believe them either infallible, or ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... tendency is to become distinctly anarchical. It is surprising to note how many of the Sophismes Anarchiques which Dumont published for Bentham, and which embody Bentham's exposure of errors distinctively French, are derived from the Roman hypothesis in its French transformation, and are unintelligible unless referred to it. On this point too it is a curious exercise to consult the Moniteur during the principal eras of the Revolution. The appeals to the Law and State of Nature become thicker as the times grow darker. ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... unconsciously to the noble impulse furnished by a fluttering bird, a dew-crowned flower, or a sun-blest forest glade; recording his thoughts exactly as evolved, and never revising the result, even though it be detestably cacophonous, or absolutely unintelligible to his less inspired circle of readers. To such a theory as this we must needs reply, that while compositions of the sort indicated may indeed represent poesy, they certainly represent art in its proper sense no more than do "futuristic" pictures and other modern monstrosities of a like ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... he redescended the steps at the back of the Green Box, to enter the inn, Master Nicless let fall this profound reflection, so deep as to be unintelligible,— ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Lingones were on the Vosges, which contain the sources of the Marne and the Moselle. The Saone separated them from the Sequani on the south-east. The account of this campaign is unintelligible in Plutarch. It is contained in Caesar's ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... she was her only child, and had been ill nearly a year, notwithstanding all the assistance she could procure for her from physic. He gravely shook his head at the doctors, bade her be under no further concern, for that her daughter should never have another fit. He then wrote a few unintelligible words in a court hand on a scrap of parchment, which had been the direction fixed to a hamper, and rolling it up, directed that it should be bound upon the girl's wrist and there allowed to remain until she was well. The ague returned no more; ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... afternoon was over she had one baby in her arms and three others hanging about her chair with adoring glances. They could not talk in her language, but they stared into her beautiful face with their great dark eyes, and spoke queer unintelligible words to one another about her. The whole little company were delighted with the new "pretty lady" who had come among them. They openly examined her simple lovely frock and hat and touched with shy furtive fingers the blue ribbon that floated over the bench from her girdle. ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... startled out of all composure at the apparition of the sleeping lady. He spoke eagerly to the Abenaquais in their own tongue, which was unintelligible to the Hurons. When he had listened to a few words of their explanation, he ran hastily to the lady, kissed her, called her by name, 'Caroline!' She woke up suddenly, and recognizing the Intendant, embraced him, crying 'Francois! 'Francois!' ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... so, it may be so. I don't know," rejoined he, "but taken along with what I saw before"—Here his voice sank into so hollow and sepulchral a tone as to be almost unintelligible. "But there is no use in arguing on the subject. Answer me this, Lieutenant Cringle, and truly, so help you God at your utmost need, did the mate leave the cabin at any moment after I was wounded by the splinter?" And he seized one of my hands convulsively with his iron paw, while he pointed ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... When Wordsworth said this he was an old man and like most old men unable to appreciate the new. Compared with the simplicity of much of Wordsworth's poetry a poem like A Death in the Desert might seem unintelligible; but surely the same objection cannot be urged against ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... And then, all at once, abject terror leapt into his eyes. His mouth opened and the cords of his neck stood out. He threw both arms before his face as if to ward off somebody or something. He began to scream out quick, unintelligible words in a high-pitched, staccato voice. I looked fearfully at the others to see if his terror would be communicated to them. But they were apparently oblivious of each other, wrapped up in their separate lives and experiences. One middle-aged man, with a rough, reddish beard, was smiling ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... is there the slightest reasonable reason to regard this as a piece of hypocrisy, a vice as alien from the Fielding of fancy as from the Fielding of fact, and one the particular manifestation of which, in this particular place, would have been equally unlikely and unintelligible. ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... he heard their step on the stairs. But he did not want to know anything more. Squire Wriggs had distinctly said they would take him over to the court, and that was enough to satisfy him that his worst fears were to be realized. The talk about thirty thousand dollars, and the guardian, was as unintelligible to him as though it had been in ancient Greek, and he did not bestow a second thought upon it. The "boy like him," to whom thirty thousand dollars would be a great deal of money, meant some other person than himself. The court was Noddy's peculiar abomination; and when he heard the ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... down upon the shoulders, and tore it away. The pale, distorted face with a bloody channel down the middle was turned inquiringly this way and that. The man put his hand to his forehead as if to collect his thoughts. Then he tried to utter a cry; the jaw moved, but only unintelligible sounds ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... break, this forest of the church under whose shade he was sitting became absolutely unintelligible. The shapes, faintly sketched, were transformed in the gloom which blurred every outline as it slowly faded. Below, in the vanishing mist, rose the immemorial trunks of fabulous white trees, planted ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... is, in a to me unintelligible way, playing a very clever game at River Hall, or else ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... "absolute necessity" is unintelligible. It is comparatively rarely that need arises to the height of actual compulsion, and when it does instances are certainly just as common among clerks ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... 408 Wild fig. The fruit of the fig is not a seed-vessel, but a receptacle inclosing the flower within it. As these trees bear some male and others female flowers, immured on all sides by the fruit, the manner of their fecundation was very unintelligible, till Tournefort and Pontedera discovered, that a kind of gnat produced in the male figs carried the fecundating dust on its wings, (Cynips Psenes Syst. Nat. 919.), and, penetrating the female fig, ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... he says, "those of Ibsen's dramas which are sane and clear, but those generally termed symbolic have been unintelligible to me, and I have never found the pleasure in them which those may who can disentangle their intricate meaning." What a curious statement, in the light of the other preface, written eight years later! "Symbolism," he there ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... in the native tongue, but as this would be unintelligible to the reader, we translate. It may also be remarked here that "Cookee" signified a white man, and is a word derived from the visit of that great navigator Captain Cook to these islands, by the natives of which ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... words were as unintelligible to the priests and the cliff-dwellers as any that had gone before, the gesture with which Billy raised the rifle to his shoulder and covered the group was eloquent enough. And as it happened, the delay saved the old man's life; for while they hesitated ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... motor, vibration and resonance. For by it these functions are enlisted in the service of art and made immediately and exquisitely responsive to the emotional exaltation of music and song. Nor are these vague terms. Psychology of song and psychological action in general may seem indefinite and unintelligible. They become, however, absolutely definite and intelligible when the part played by the nerves as intermediaries between mind and muscular action of a subtle and highly refined order is appreciated. The mind presses the button, the nerves carry the messages, and muscle acts ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... that growing proportion of readers who belong entirely to the new order, who are growing up with only the vaguest early memories of the old world, I find the greatest difficulty in writing down the unintelligible confusions that were matter of ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... his niece Dogess at Falieri's side, brought the lovely Annunciata to him secretly. Now, when old Falieri saw the angelic maiden, he was quite taken aback by her wonderful beauty, and was scarcely able to stammer out a few unintelligible words as he sued for her hand. Annunciata, no doubt well instructed by Bodoeri beforehand, fell upon her knees before the princely old man, her cheeks flushing crimson. She grasped his hand and pressed it to her lips, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... our good and wisely, is not so hard to grant when the facts of the soul are weighed with the facts of Nature. Power, Love, Wisdom—there you have a real trinity which makes up the Jewish God. And in this God we trust, incomprehensible as are His ways, unintelligible as is His essence. 'Thy ways are not My ways nor Thy thoughts My thoughts.' That comes into collision with no modern philosophies; we appeal to experience and make no demands upon the faculty for believing things 'because ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... applied to, Cassiodorus writes him, in his master's name, a letter which gives us some interesting information as to the past career of Boethius, and then proceeds to give a specification of the required machines, in language so magnificent as to be, at any rate to modern mechanicians, hopelessly unintelligible. Then a shorter letter, to accompany the clock and dial, is written to King Gundobad. This letter, which is written in a slightly condescending tone, says that the tie of affinity between the two kings makes it right that Gundobad ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... The new poem was unintelligible to the critics—but what of that? he asked himself. One of his optimistic moods was upon him. He despised the critics for their lack of perception and as he held the slim volume in his hands and gazed upon that, to him, wondrous title-page, his countenance shone as though it had caught ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... hand down with a bang on the table and uttered anathemas in French and Provencal entirely unintelligible to Eugene Miller; but the youth knew by instinct that they were useful, soul-destroying curses and ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... least, and who wished the best for His children—far better than they had insight to wish for themselves, and who thus could be trusted not to be inflicting any useless blow, any meaningless torment, even when things looked blackest and the world most unintelligible. ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... with hair artfully put back, and bonnet on side: "vaistie wanis" is now unintelligible; some interpret the phrase as meaning "wasteful wants", but this seems improbable, considering the locality or scene of ...
— English Satires • Various
... clerk leaped a little, robin-like man with a red waistcoat, beside himself with rage. Bill Cowan and his friends stared at this diminutive Frenchman, open-mouthed, as he poured forth a veritable torrent of unintelligible words, plentifully mixed with sacres, which he ripped out like snarls. I would as soon have touched him as a ball of angry bees or a pair of fighting wildcats. Not so Bill Cowan. When that worthy recovered from his first surprise he seized hold of some of the man's ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was he next morning. They had sat down to their breakfast when Lucy with a cry of surprise pointed upwards. In the centre of the ceiling was scrawled, with a burned stick apparently, the number 28. To his daughter it was unintelligible, and he did not enlighten her. That night he sat up with his gun and kept watch and ward. He saw and he heard nothing, and yet in the morning a great 27 had been painted upon the ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to quit the field she had so rashly ventured upon. Her answer to Mr. Stoutenburgh, if made, was too unintelligible to be understood or remembered; and meanwhile she was as the Squire had hinted, looking very well, and a picture of dainty confusion. It might not help the confusion, though it did put her face more out of sight, to be rescued from the Squire's hands and placed ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... and yet with eager impatience, I opened the packet and trimmed my lamp. Conceive my dismay when I found the whole written in an unintelligible cipher. I present the reader with ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... few sentences, Karuska's voice had steadily risen almost to a shriek. As he endeavored to give the name of the doctor's treacherous helper his voice changed to an unintelligible screech and then died away into silence. Major Martin stepped forward and bent over the prone figure. Hurriedly he tore away the electrical connections and placed a stethoscope over the Russian's heart. He listened for a moment and then straightened ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... attempt to deduce a settled scheme of philosophy from these discourses among the mountains. I would urge only that as a guide to conduct Wordsworth's precepts are not in themselves either unintelligible or visionary. For whereas some moralists would have us amend nature, and others bid us follow her, there is apt to be something impracticable in the first maxim, and something vague in the second. Asceticism, quietism, enthusiasm, ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... his style and expression are flat and slow, sometimes improper and absurd; the matter is heavy, trivial, and insipid, sometimes despicable and perfectly ridiculous; or else, on the other side, he runs up into unintelligible speculation, empty notions, and abstracted flights, all clad in words ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... across the pavement and road alike, so that it seemed impossible to pass by them. I inquired of my driver what this assembling of the people meant. "Oh," says he, "Barrymore has made another hit." This answer being perfectly unintelligible to me, I requested some further explanation, and discovered that "Barrymore" was the name of a stage-player favored by the populace; that the building was a theater, and that all these creatures with immortal souls were waiting, before the doors ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... must understand speech so as to do what the former bid them. When the Deity determined to confound the builders of Babel, or, in other words, to render co-operative work impossible, he did not cut off their hands, but he virtually took speech away from them, by rendering the language of each unintelligible to all the rest. Moreover, in the case of tasks the nature of which is highly complex, it is necessary not only that the organizers should make use of speech, but also that what they speak should systematically be written down. The writing down, indeed, is often the most important ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... dinner, when rumors of Genevieve Ryan's engagement to Lord Hastings were in lively circulation, Faraday called at the lion-guarded mansion on California Street, and, in answering to his regulation request for the ladies, received the usual unintelligible Chinese rejoinder, and was shown into the gold drawing-room. There, standing in front of a long mirror, looking at her skirts with an eye of pondering criticism, was Miss Genevieve, dressed to go out. She caught sight of ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... dissimilar energies,—one is detected to encroach on the boundary of another, and when the mechanism of mind, fabricated by these scholastic dictators, is attempted to be set in motion, it is found incapable of working. For the grand moving power we have an undefined, and consequently unintelligible doctrine of Ideas, of supposed spiritual and directing agency; the admission of which would destroy the responsibility of a human being both here and hereafter, and degrade his ennobled condition to the instinct of the speechless brute. To endow these insubstantial and reflected phantasms ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... of offenders might be destroyed; but the French translator construes it, "Que nulle maison de Rome ne saroit donnee en propre, pour quelque raison que ce put etre; mais que les revenus en appartiendroient au public!" (The English translator makes this law unintelligible:—"That no family of Rome shall appropriate to their own use what they think fit, but that the revenues shall appertain to the public"!!!—the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... regions subjugated by its arms. The cultivated tongue employed by the scribes of Nineve and Babylon in the palmy days of their race, had long become a sort of literary dialect, used in writings of a lofty character and understood by a select few, but unintelligible to the common people. The populace in town or country talked an Aramaic jargon, clumsier and more prolix than Assyrian, but easier to understand. We know how successfully the Aramaeans had managed to push their way along the Euphrates and into Syria towards the close of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... dreariness, which can hardly be altered or expressed, this miserable floating down the muddy current, where there is no sharp repentance or fiery battling, nothing but a mean abandonment to a meaningless and unintelligible destiny, seems to have in it no seed ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... very sorry, my dear, but—oh, no! oh, no! oh, no—' His voice trailed away into an unintelligible mutter. He was a very old man, and he was not always able to concentrate his thoughts on a subject for ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... while these things are the most serious realities in the world, and undoubtedly more important than any other thing, little attempt is made by humanity to unravel or classify them. I cannot here enter into the details of these instructions, which indeed would be unintelligible, but they showed me at first what I had not at all apprehended, namely the proportionate importance and unimportance of all the passions and emotions which regulate our relations with other souls. These discourses were given at regular intervals, and much of our time was spent in discussing ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... assumes a written form, and it is the most marked of professional distortions, the most unintelligible to the illiterate, who think waveringly and who do not, happily for them, suffer the continual servitude to precision of word and to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Nature had been an unintelligible chaos of detail, but beauty, through ecclesiastical tradition, an abstract attribute of the Holy Family and the Saints, and they had used their best powers of imagination in accordance with this view. Hence they ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... throwing out the guttural sounds, altering the pronunciation and the quantity, and disusing many words and terms of great significance. In consequence of these innovations, the works of our best poets, such as Chaucer, Spenser, and even Shakespeare, were become, in many parts, unintelligible to the natives of South Britain, whereas the Scots, who retain the antient language, understand them without the help of a glossary. 'For instance (said he), how have your commentators been puzzled by the following expression in the Tempest ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... baby in the unintelligible mother-language inspired by the occasion. A baby just able to smile at her, and coo and crow and chuckle in that peculiarly unctious manner common to babies of amiable character; a fair blue-eyed baby, big ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... could not but create; that there is in matter a matter which is not matter; that the archetypal ideas of the world are separated from each other, in the Divine mind, by a division which is obscure and unintelligible, and yet substantial and real, which involves intelligibility, &c. We meet with like contradictions concerning the origin of evil. To explain this problem,—one of the profoundest in philosophy,—M. Lamennais at one time ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... old sorts still remain, there is now, in the middle, such a fusion of the two pursuits that a plain man is wofully puzzled. The theologian writes a philosophy which seems to tell us that the New Testament is a system of psychology; and the philosopher writes a Christianity which is utterly unintelligible as to the question whether the Resurrection be a fact or a transcendental allegory. What between the theologian who assents to the Athanasian denunciation in what seems the sense of no denunciation, and the ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... Gilbert Murray, speaking of Orphism—a great wave of religious reform which swept over Greece and South Italy in the sixth century B.C.—says: (1) "A curious relic of primitive superstition and cruelty remained firmly imbedded in Orphism, a doctrine irrational and unintelligible, and for that very reason wrapped in the deepest and most sacred mystery: a belief in the SACRIFICE OF DIONYSUS HIMSELF, AND THE PURIFICATION OF MAN BY HIS BLOOD. It seems possible that the savage Thracians, in the fury of their ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... knew that the word of farewell was not for him but for all that the man was leaving—friends, memories, the place that he had loved in his strange, crooked way, all that he was putting behind him forever. A bell rang, a voice shouted the unintelligible something that stands for "All aboard," the train ground into motion, ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... and the same gentleman observes in another place, that in the editions of 1681, there are such gross errors, especially in the Latin Poems, as make several lines unintelligible; and that in the volume of Poems on Affairs of State, the same mistakes are as frequent; and in those, some pieces are attributed to our author, which he never wrote. Most of his Poems printed in Dryden's Miscellanies ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... sparkling with youth. These wonderful young people perplexed Miss Wodehouse; here was another incomprehensible specimen—most incomprehensible perhaps of all that had ever crossed her mild elderly horizon with bewildering unintelligible light. ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... the bottom, and the pure stream flows along over it."—Philological Museum, i, 645. "This use is bounded by the province, county, or district, which gives name to the dialect, and beyond which its peculiarities are sometimes unintelligible, and always ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... hum vibrating, like the hawk moth, at the mouth of the cavern of mystery, endowing Jacob Flanders with all sorts of qualities he had not at all—for though, certainly, he sat talking to Bonamy, half of what he said was too dull to repeat; much unintelligible (about unknown people and Parliament); what remains is mostly a matter of guess work. Yet over ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... particulars respecting the vessel as he judged it for his interest to communicate; the other, designed to convey such information as he was possessed of respecting European politics, being written in Dutch, unfortunately proved unintelligible; and we could only gather from Mr. Ormsby and the master, who spoke bad English, that a misunderstanding subsisted between Great Britain and Spain; but on what account could ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... Sully growled an unintelligible reply, but that he recognized the truth of the lad's words was evident when he slowly dropped his clenched fist ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... not quite easy in his chair, "from my birthday. I am, to myself, an unintelligible book with the earlier chapters all torn out, and thrown away. My childhood had no grace of childhood, my youth had no charm of youth, and what can be expected from such a lost beginning?" His eyes meeting ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... similarly. But, early on the following day, the third day before the Kalends of July, not long after sunrise, my new valet came to me his face ashen. He babbled some unintelligible syllables and before I could comprehend him, my bedroom was entered by a Pannonian sergeant, grim as the centurions from Britain who had liberated Agathemer and me from the ergastulum at Placentia. Behind him were four ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... measure of his achievements. It is that sense of the eternity of consequences—and that sense only—which can satisfy the human heart. Time is too short, this planet is too small, and this mortal body is too weak for the surging thoughts, the unintelligible desires of the soul. Nothing less than infinity can hallow emotions: their passingness—which seems the rule in the fever and turmoil of city life—is not their abatement but their degradation. Change they must, but perish utterly they ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... down and intimated that I would keep it on the ground beside me. I addressed them in the Swan River native language, and they spoke much in return, but I must say that our language seemed to be mutually unintelligible. At last, by watching their mode of intonation, and accommodating myself to their dialect, I managed to succeed a little better. In this way they understood my inquiries for water, and their answer at last was precisely in the Swan River language, ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... inable a man to render an intelligible, nay probable, if not the true reason of all the Phaenomena of Fire, which, as it has been found by Writers and Philosophers of all Ages a matter of no small difficulty, as may be sufficiently understood by their strange Hypotheses, and unintelligible Solutions of some few Phaenomena of it; so will it prove a matter of no small concern and use in humane affairs, as I shall elsewhere endeavour to manifest when I come to shew the use of the Air in respiration, and for the preservation of the life, nay, for the ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... doorways, and dungeons with a feeling of sorrow and dismay. We could distinguish the great hall, with its chimney-pieces built in the walls; but even this was without either floor or roof, and the rest appeared to us as an unintelligible mass of decaying stonework. And yet, about half a century before we made our appearance at the ruins, a visitor arrived who could see through them almost at a glance, and restored them in imagination to their former magnificence, as they appeared in the time of Queen Elizabeth. ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... enclosure four times, they halt, and stand in line with their backs turned toward it. Then the Snake fraternity appears, headed by its priest, and performs the same ceremony. Then they too form a line, facing the Antelopes, and all of them, for about five minutes, wave their wands and chant some unintelligible words. Suddenly one Antelope and one Snake man rush to the kisi, and the priest who is presiding over the serpents presents them with a snake. The Snake man immediately places the wriggling reptile in his mouth, and holds it ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... something unintelligible and burst into tears. The only words the girls could make out were "I did it." It was the most terrible thing that had ever happened to any of them and Edna felt so sorry for the culprit that all resentment vanished altogether. She forgot entirely ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard
... these newly-invented pieces is essentially different from the old. The dialogue, which used to be carried on in recitative, and which, in Metastasio's operas, is often so beautiful and interesting, and now cut up (and rendered unintelligible if it were worth listening to) into pezzi concertati, or long singing conversations, which present a tedious succession of unconnected, ever-changing motives, having nothing to do with each other; and if a satisfactory air is for a moment introduced, ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... out something unintelligible. But before I could pull up the horses, before I even guessed what she meant to do, I saw her stand up on Danny's back, spring from his rump, and,—land lightly in ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... room mentioned in the bill, and knocked at the door. A servant appeared, of whom Alonzo enquired for the lodger. The servant answered him in French, which Alonzo did not understand: he replied in his own language, but found it was unintelligible to the servant. A grave middle aged gentleman then came to the door from within the room and ended their jabbering at each other: he, in the English language, desired Alonzo to walk in. It was an apartment, neatly furnished; no person was therein except the gentleman and ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... are dealing with finite factors, the function of pain and the nature of evil can be more or less understood, but as soon as it is supposed to display the working of an infinite power everything becomes wholly unintelligible. We can no longer console ourselves with the hope that "good becomes the final goal of ill," we can no longer fancy that imperfection serves any secondary purpose in the economy of the universe. ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... after-time was to show, he had undoubtedly inherited. So, too, from them, it may be, came another characteristic—that instinct to endure, to wait, to abide the issue of circumstance, which in the days of his power made him to the politicians as unintelligible as once he had been to the forest huntsmen. Nevertheless, the most distinctive part of those primitive women, the sealed passionateness of their spirits, he never from childhood to the end revealed. ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... it is we who are the chief curiosity,—not they. The dresses of the ladies are unobstrusively but openly admired,—gloves and hat-pins discussed in detail, in an unintelligible patois. I inquire how many people there are in the village; what they find to do; whether they are not lonely, so far from the world. They answer my queries in unconfused French, speaking both this and their patois, and even ask respectful ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... departing southward, accompanied by two men who bore packs on their shoulders. Not until then did Rossland gather his nerve sufficiently to stop and look back. His breathless voice carried something unintelligible to Alan. But he did not return for his coat ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... left polygamy untouched. [Here Dr. Wisner again asked if Dr. R. regarded the Bible as sustaining the polygamy of the Old Testament.] Dr. R.—Yes, sir; yes, sir; yes, sir. Let the reporters mark that question, and my answer. (Laughter.) My principle vindicates God from unintelligible abstractions. I fearlessly tell what the Bible says. In its strength, I am not afraid of earth or hell. I fear only God. God made no law against polygamy, in the beginning. Therefore it was no sin for a man ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... you witness the perfect confidence with which the man is ready to express his opinion upon any subject, you will be quite sure that the man has not the faintest notion of what his opinion is worth. I remember a blockhead saying that certain lines of poetry were nonsense. He said that they were unintelligible: that they were rubbish. I suggested that it did not follow that they were unintelligible because he could not understand them. I told him that various competent judges thought them very noble lines indeed. The blockhead stuck to his opinion with the utmost firmness. ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... the law of Marius was to diminish the crowd and pressure by letting fewer persons come in at a time. Cicero speaks of this law of Marius (De Legibus, iii. 17). As the law had reference to elections and its object was among other things to prevent bribery, Plutarch's remark is unintelligible: the text is corrupt, or he has ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... plain to every intelligent physician who reads his discourses; especially those in the gospel of John. They are a mixture of something that looks like sublimity, strangely disfigured by wild, and incoherent words. So unintelligible indeed, that even the profoundest of Christian divines have never been able to fathom all their mysteries. To prove that I do not say these things rashly, wickedly, or out of any malignity towards the character of Jesus, which I really ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... and looked into the dark entrance, the gusts having blown out the light. He shook his head, muttered something unintelligible, and then bent his uncertain steps to the tavern. The next morning Mr. Baron suspected where he was and went to see him. The overseer was found to be a pitiable spectacle, haggard trembling, nervous in the extreme, yet sullen ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... he had gone on for some time in this unintelligible cant, I found that he jumbled natural and moral ideas together in the same discourse, and that his great secret was nothing else ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... For this almost unintelligible chapter there is no excuse that I can offer, save that I have written it with the ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... "listen to them. This would all have been unintelligible to us, if you had not related to us what ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... it. She did not like to be untrue to her gallant nephew. But as she came to turn it in her mind there were certain circumstances which recommended the change to her—should the change be necessary. Florence certainly had expressed an unintelligible objection to the elder brother. Why should the younger not be more successful? Mrs. Mountjoy's heart had begun to droop within her as she had thought that her girl would prove deaf to the voice of the charmer. Another charmer had come, most objectionable in her sight, ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... youth pointed back to the garden, and, laughing hideously, uttered some words in gibberish which were quite unintelligible. ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... observe, good reader: let the immoralities of such society be occasionally what they may, the affections speak a far simpler and more natural language: and one remark is sufficient to illustrate this. Love, as it is represented in comedy, is absolutely unintelligible to the lower classes: in tragedy it first becomes perfectly comprehensible ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... write things that may not be understood! What I have written I have written merely to indicate the qualities in Henry Irving's nature, which were unintelligible to me, perhaps because I have always been more woman than artist. He always put the theater first. He lived in it, he died in it. He had none of what I may call my bourgeois qualities—the love of being in love, the love of a home, the dislike of solitude. ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... two young men, Droz and De Lepany, were discussing, in enthusiastic but somewhat unintelligible language, the merits of a certain Monsieur Lemonnier, of whom, although till that moment ignorant of his name and fame, I at once perceived that he must be some celebrated ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... speaking chiefly to his opposite neighbor, "so, I tried when I drew or painted to reproduce nature with the greatest truth; but at a certain point I became conscious of a perception that a hidden meaning in an unintelligible language lay written there. The form of things, and also every so-called accident of form, appeared to me to be the necessary expression of something within, which was hidden from me. The wish arose in me to penetrate behind the visible face ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... the due and noble relations between man and his companion creatures, the horse, dog, and falcon, enough has been said in my former writings—unintelligible enough to a chivalry which passes six months of its annual life in Rotten Row, and spends the rents of its Cumberland Hills in building furnaces round Furness Abbey; but which careful students either of past knighthood, or of future Christianity, will find securely and always ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... no doubt was the case. And yet who can deny her praise for fidelity to her own convictions? When we read of those who have massacred and tortured their opponents in religion, have boiled alive the unfortunates who have differed from themselves as to the meaning of an unintelligible word or two, have vigorously torn the entrails out of those who have been pious with a piety different from their own, how shall we dare to say that they should be punished for their fidelity? Mrs. Bolton ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... be no mistake, and no one rejoices in it more than I do myself; for, the unintelligible words gave me a great deal of vexation. Well, my dear sir, understanding your wishes, my secretary, Mr. Atwood, has drawn the commencement of a will, in the usual form, using your own pious and proper language of—'In the name of God, Amen,' as the ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... in our days too. Alas! how many Christians there are to whom the very word Holy, though it be the name by which the Father, in His New Testament, loves to call His children more than any other, is strange and unintelligible. And again, alas! for how many Christians there are for whom, when the word is heard, it has but little attraction, because it has never yet been shown to them as a life that is indeed possible, and unutterably blessed. And ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... a party of us took to the battlefield of "Guilford-Old-Court-House" may be worth noting as an encouragement to believe that our descriptions of the scenes of our own engagements need not become unintelligible even in the distant future. Among the combats of our Revolutionary War, Guilford Court House ranks high in importance; for the check there given to the invading British army under Lord Cornwallis ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... of the tablet we find the viceroy of Lower Egypt, Hemaka, mentioned; also "the Hawk (i. e. the king) seizes the seat of the Libyans," and some unintelligible record of a jeweller of the palace and a king's carpenter. On a similar tablet (of Sen) we find the words "the king's carpenter made this record." All these little tablets are then the records of single years of a king's life, and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... of the three could understand Arabic, the order of the Emir would have been unintelligible to them had it not been for the conduct of Mansoor. The unfortunate dragoman, after all his treachery and all his subservience and apostasy, found his worst fears realised when the Dervish leader gave his curt command. With a shriek of fear the poor wretch threw himself ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... elements? Why, if the atoms have weight of their own, as M. Liebig appears to believe, may they not also have electricity and life of their own? Curious thing! the phenomena of matter, like those of mind, become intelligible only by supposing them to be produced by unintelligible forces and governed by contradictory laws: such is the inference to be drawn from every page ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... honey. The woman looked at her, and answered again with the unintelligible grunt, of unbelieving wonder, which Daisy had heard once before. Daisy thought on the whole the safest way was not to talk, but to fetch her beautiful "Jewess" flowers to speak for themselves. So she ran off ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... matter and of space are inseparable. We derive the notion of space from matter and form. But we have no adequate conception either of matter or space. Matter in its ultimate resolution is as unintelligible as what men call mind, spirit, or by whatever other name they may express the power which makes itself known by acts. Anaxagoras laid down the distinction between intelligence [Greek: nous] and matter, and he said that intelligence ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... fallen into disuse and hence are not commonly understood. Provincialisms abound, hence the history of the author and the environment in which he was reared should be taken into account, for sometimes there are phrases that are unintelligible without a knowledge of the writer's early surroundings. Translations as a rule should be consulted only with allowance, for to the best of them the Italian saying "Traduttore, tradittore" is applicable. With the greatest sincerity and honesty on the part of the translator, he is ...
— Documentary History of the Rio Grande Pueblos of New Mexico; I. Bibliographic Introduction • Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier
... same high-pitched squeals, he had heard before—this was all that he could distinguish at first. Then the shrill sounds broke into words and unintelligible phrases, and he knew ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... This sentence is unintelligible and doubtless the MS. is corrupt. No editor has offered a wholly satisfactory emendation, though by comparing Book Sixty, chapter 4, the sense would seem to require: "no one, in taking the oath, mentions the name of Tiberius in the number ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... onward, reached the wicket, just then occupied by Hugo's broad and curious face prying out cautiously into the misty and unintelligible void, without being a whit the wiser ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... is not confined to any European country, and has been studied in Italy by Niceforo (Il Gergo, 1897, cap. 1 and 2), who regards it as a weapon of social defence against an inquisitive or hostile environment, since it enables things to be said with a meaning which is unintelligible to all but the initiated person. While it is quite true that the custom is supported by the consciousness of its practical advantages, it has another source in a desire to avoid what is felt to be the vulgar immodesty of direct speech. This is sufficiently shown by the fact that such slang is ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... dear Miss Mayberry," said the gentleman, "that we do not know what our language will be in eight hundred or a thousand years from now. The English of to-day may be utterly unintelligible to the readers of that era, but that portion of our literature which I put into imperishable and unchangeable Greek will be the same then as now. The scholar may read it for his own pleasure and profit, or he may translate ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... irresistible. But I was not satisfied. I called the mains and won his crowns—he was a mere baby at the game—but half my mind was elsewhere. There was something here that I did not understand; some influence at work on which I had not counted; something moving under the surface as unintelligible to me as the soldiers' presence. Had the Captain repudiated my commission altogether, and put me to the door or sent me to the guard-house, I could have followed that. But these dubious hints, this passive ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman |
