"Unutterable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Strong as I am, it will kill me. What do you say? Am I working myself into my grave, in the medical interests of humanity? That for humanity! I am working for my own satisfaction—for my own pride—for my own unutterable pleasure in beating other men—for the fame that will keep my name living hundreds of years hence. Humanity! I say with my foreign brethren—Knowledge for its own sake, is the one god I worship. Knowledge is its own justification and its own reward. The roaring mob ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... unutterable surprise the two great forces of his life and personality met together with an explosive violence wholly beyond his power to control. For on the one hand lay the fierce enticement of Skale's heaven, with all that it portended, and on ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... rather cold. I was gloomy, and walked because I had nothing to do. I passed by some flowers placed breast-high upon a wall. A jonquil in bloom was there. It is the strongest expression of desire: it was the first perfume of the year. I felt all the happiness destined for man. This unutterable harmony of souls, the phantom of the ideal world, arose in me complete. I never felt anything so great or so instantaneous. I know not what shape, what analogy, what secret of relation it was that made me see in this flower a limitless beauty. . . . I shall never enclose in a conception this power, ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes
... he said quietly. "There was a man delirious with drink who imagined one. There was you with the bruises on your throat and the unutterable misery in your eyes and a little rifle in your hands. There was ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... wind had increased to a hurricane; the sky was so entirely obscured with black clouds, and the rain poured in such torrents, that objects could not be discerned from the wheel to the ship's head. Soon the pumps were choked and could be no longer worked. Then dismay seized on all, and nothing but unutterable despair, anguish and horror, wrought up to frenzy, were to be seen. Not a single person was capable of an effort to be useful; all seemed more desirous to terminate their calamities in an embrace of death, than willing, by a painful exertion, to ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... stand back there till the train starts, but do not you notice me. God bless you, Phineas." She held his hand tight within her own for some seconds, and looked into his face with an unutterable love. Then she drew down her veil, and went and stood apart till the ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... throw of her house; a moment ago he had been here, beside her—there beyond, too, in the dining-room, sitting opposite to her at her own table as he had sat in his days of innocence and honour for many a long year before his crime. In the sudden necessity of acting, in the unutterable surprise of finding herself again face to face with him, she had been calm; now that he was gone she felt as though she must go mad. She asked herself if this filthy tramp, this branded villain, was the husband she had loved and cherished for years, ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... all the original group, still sat near Geordie, where she could watch every movement, though she could not be seen by him. She kept gazing at him with unutterable anguish in her eyes, and only she detected the sharp spasms that occasionally crossed his face, and felt his frame quiver with pain which ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... conscientiousness, now the stately measure of a Versailles minuet, and now the spritely steps of a Parisian jig, would be either ludicrous or pathetic—one hardly knows which—were it not so certainly neither the one nor the other, but simply dreary with an unutterable dreariness, from which the eyes of men avert themselves in shuddering dismay. Frederick himself felt that there was something wrong—something, but not really very much. All that was wanted was a little expert advice; and obviously Voltaire was the man to supply it—Voltaire, the one ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... was well with him, and now there is only that deadly silence. And yet, I often feel if I had but courage to go in, surely I must find him, surely he must be waiting for me and wanting me. But how foolish to talk of any one form of this unutterable blank, which meets me at every turn, intertwined with everything I say or do, and taking a new shape every moment, and the yearning and the aching which have been my portion for four years—the yearning for my other lost ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... acting like a very perverse and foolish one; but then rather than have any more scenes"—and looking unutterable things she passed on down ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... the hard, delicious pressure which an accompanying crown-piece can bestow—"look here, Higgins, if Scarlett brings you any Bank of England notes to change, be sure you get him to put his full name and address on them." Emphatic head-shakes, profound winks, unutterable contortions, accompanied this piece of sound advice; and Dent left the shop, having conveyed the impression which he meant to convey—that Scarlett had stolen some Bank of England notes, and that Dent for a private motive of his own, which it did not behove Higgins ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... custom also was taught the natives by the degraded whites? Apart from the diabolical cruelty to a woman of which no white man except a maniac would ever be individually guilty—whereas this is a tribal custom—note the unutterable masculine selfishness of this "jealousy," which, while indifferent to chastity and fidelity, per se, punishes by proxy, leaving the real culprit untouched and happy at having not only had his intrigue but a chance to get rid of ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... moment she felt contused, then came a revulsion. Of course, the whole thing was perfectly ridiculous; how could she ever have thought it for a moment? In this day and time, in this house! She was filled with unutterable relief, ready to laugh hysterically at ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... the camp. I have managed to buy some pyjamas. Probably you would see something very ludicrous in the way in which, after an elaborate hot-bath and hair-cutting, dressed out in one's clean pyjamas and lying between clean sheets, one rolls one's eyes with unutterable complacency on one's surroundings. All our comforts are attended to. We have a shell-proof shelter in a ravine close by, handy in case of visits from De Wet; and the two great cow-guns, like guardian angels, doze on the top of the hill behind the hospital. Under the shadow of their wing ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... Greek; and they have Professor Chrystal, who is a man filled with the mathematics. And doubtless these are set- offs. But they cannot change the fact that Professor Blackie has retired, and that Professor Kelland is dead. No man's education is complete or truly liberal who knew not Kelland. There were unutterable lessons in the mere sight of that frail old clerical gentleman, lively as a boy, kind like a fairy godfather, and keeping perfect order in his class by the spell of that very kindness. I have heard him drift into reminiscences in class time, though not for long, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a little at first, and tried to take her hands away. But when she found that Brian's clasp was firm, she drew herself up and looked him in the face with eyes that were full of an unutterable sadness, but also of a resolution which ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... asserted that the Crown Prince Alexander had been stabbed by a leader of the war-party. Another whispers that King Peter is dying from an apoplectic fit or as the result of an attentat. The reports become wilder, and each increases the dread of some unutterable, imminent catastrophe. ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... had gently risen from his chair, and come one step nearer—where he stood looking on her with such a smile as seldom has been upon human face—a smile of unutterable sorrow, love, repentance, hope. She gazed, speechless now, her spirit drinking in the vision of that smile. It was like mountain air, like water, like wine, like eternal life! It was forgiveness and peace from the Lord of all. And had her brain been ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... worthy Moody. How well he wears! Not a gray hair on his head—and look at mine! What dye do you use, Moody? If he had my open disposition he would tell. As it is, he looks unutterable things, and holds his tongue. Ah! if I could only have held my tongue—when I was in the diplomatic service, you know—what a position I might have occupied by this time! Don't let me interrupt you, Moody, if you have anything to ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... known everything from the very first. Danvers said in one of his letters to you that life with you would be happiness unutterable, even in a desert place. I have brought you here to meet him. ...
— The Trader's Wife - 1901 • Louis Becke
... the movement on its feet at first he realized every possession that he had. It left him penniless, if he was not almost so already, and in the end it left him smothered beneath the glory of his blinding and unutterable Dream. He never understood that suggestion is more effective than a sledge-hammer. His faith was no mere little seed of mustard, but a full-fledged forest singing its message in a wind of thunder. He shouted it aloud ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... a female. She had raised her veil also in prayer: and when our eyes met, methought a celestial ray shot from those dark and smiling orbs at once into my soul. Never, my Clodius, have I seen mortal face more exquisitely molded: a certain melancholy softened and yet elevated its expression: that unutterable something, which springs from the soul, and which our sculptors have imparted to the aspect of Psyche, gave her beauty I know not what of divine and noble; tears were rolling down her eyes. I guessed at once that she was also of Athenian lineage; and that in my prayer for Athens ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... slave-driver at first hand; if he lives upon plundered labor he can no more help himself than I. Do not say that you hope for much more; but tell me, if you can, what more you have any chance of getting? Mind, I do not ask what more you desire; we all desire unutterable things. I ask you what more you ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... shriek of agony go up into the silent and all-surrounding Infinitude; but also, amidst the stir and noise of visible life, from the inmost bosom of the visible man, there goes up an imploring call, a beseeching cry, an asking, unuttered, and unutterable, for revelation, wailingly and in almost speechless agony praying the dread arch of mystery to break, and the stars that roll above the waves of mortal trouble, to speak; the enthroned majesty of those awful heights to find a voice; the mysterious and reserved heavens ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... that prompted this delay. He longed to watch those mysterious persons, who, almost oblivious of his presence, were speaking their mortal farewells in their glances, which were impassioned and of unutterable sadness. ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... to stammer out something about the Madrono berries being at her "disposicion" (the tree was in her own garden!), and she took the branches in her little brown hand with a soft response to my unutterable glances. ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... had not left him, watched these different symptoms with unutterable anxiety; but in spite of his fright, he drew a sigh of relief when he saw ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... after her with an expression of owlish and unutterable surprise on his swarthy countenance. Then he smiled faintly at the unexpected and appalling—not to say curious—fate that awaited him; but reflecting that, although lugubrious and long, Mitford was deep-chested, broad-shouldered, ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... I was descending a rocky cliff a few hundred feet from a plateau, while the thunders roared with terrific crash. The rain fell in sheets, plunging in wild fury in cataracts down the mountain side. There was desolation and terror unutterable. I leaned close to a shelving rock, and as I thought of once happy days in Aberdeen, of the love bestowed upon me by my dear mother—gone forever from this world—my own condition, now a homeless wanderer in a foreign land, perhaps to soon meet death ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... to me reveal Thy new, unutterable name? Tell me, I still beseech thee, tell; To know it now resolved I am; Wrestling, I will not let thee go Till I thy name, ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... by tens of thousands of your people. For four days I have lived among the dead, and there I have seen your false gods which are devils. There also I have seen the priests that served them, and many of those who worshipped them plunged into torment unutterable. Because of the worship of these demon gods the people of ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... the word spoken when a loud and awful explosion shook the building to its foundations. Horror and consternation were seen upon the hitherto composed features of the beggar. He grasped his crutch, and with a yell of unutterable anguish he cried, "Ruined—betrayed! May the fiends follow ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... that I have been insulted and struck!" hissed the one questioned, quivering with unutterable anger. ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... here, not with a want in her, but with an abyss, depth beyond depth of tenderness and longing and frustration, of a passion that found no clear voice in her works, because it was one with the elemental nature in her, undefined, unuttered, unutterable. ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... displeased with me. I cannot conceal from you that my astonishment is profound and unutterable at your new religion—your new faith in this pseud-Ossian—and your desecration, in his service, of the old Hellenic altars. And by the way, my own figure reminds me to inquire of you whether you are ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... the barren limbs. Charley was about to call his companions together and propose a return to camp when a sudden cry sent the blood tingling through his veins. It was Walter's voice, and its tone was that of fear and horror unutterable. Pausing a second to locate the direction of the sound, Charley bounded away for it at the top of his speed. As he passed a thick clump of trees the captain broke out from among them and ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... shall be obeyed. [He retires into another apartment.] What is this horror unutterable? 'Tis no mere passing fit of anger. What shall I do?—Ah! I have it! I have it! I will take upon myself to contrive some plan for his escape. Kauzhiyu, Kauzhiyu, art ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... as she accompanied the lovers to the lonely arbors, and would walk with them by the clear light of the moon. She wondered her husband did not stay at home. She was jealous—why did he not love her, sit by her side, squeeze her hand, and look unutterable things? Gentle reader, I will tell thee; they neither of them felt what they could not utter. I will not pretend to say that they always annexed an idea to a word; but they had none of those feelings which are not ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... the starlight, we dream of the sun, we must remember that both sun and stars are God's. Past the unutterable leagues that divide us now, one day we shall meet again, purged, mayhap, of earthly ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... sombre, his pulse weakened, and he longed to return to her side to tell her something he had forgotten. He did this several times, and hesitated in his speech, reddened, and left her, stumbling over the grass like a lame man. Never such a crazy wooer, never a calmer maiden. She looked unutterable sentiment, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... adamant, and more Fatal than winds, which from the mouth Of the rough North invade the South; The reeking blade to view presents The blood of helpless innocents, And on the hilt, as meek become As lamb before the shearers dumb, 1830 With downcast eye, and solemn show Of deep, unutterable woe, Mourning the time when Freedom reign'd, Fast to a rock was Justice chain'd. In his left hand, in wax impress'd, With bells and gewgaws idly dress'd, An image, cast in baby mould, He held, and seem'd o'erjoy'd to hold On this he ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... and having thus let his head fall ([Greek: epipeson]) on (or close to) His Master's chest ([Greek: epi to stethos]), he says softly,—'Lord, who is it?' ... The moment is perhaps the most memorable in the Evangelist's life: the position, one of unutterable privilege. Time, place, posture, action,—all settle so deep into his soul, that when, in his old age, he would identify himself, he describes himself as 'the disciple whom Jesus loved; who also at the Supper' (that memorable Supper!) 'lay ([Greek: anepesen][190]) on Jesus' ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... of a mind which took—(of the senses)—only so much life as would hold down the spirit during its probation; and when this spiritual mouth was at rest, no painter has ever drawn lips on which lay more of the unutterable pensiveness of beauty which we dream to have been Mary's, in the childhood of Jesus. A tear in the heart was the instinctive answer to Stephania's every look when she did not smile; and her large, soft, slowly-lifting eyes, were to any elevated perception, it seemed to me, most ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... spiritual, moral, non-aesthetic, and can embody themselves in form and feature only most imperfectly. Given equal skill in expression, equal command of words, one man can say all that he feels, and more, while another is tortured with a sense of much more to be uttered, were it not unutterable. Perhaps it is in some hint of this hidden wealth of unuttered meaning that skilled eyes find in Angelico what they can never find in Lippi. A second reason might be found in the external influence exerted on the artist by society, its requirements, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... rushing precipitately into the room, just caught his arm, and then, overcome by my own fears, I fell down at his side breathless and senseless. My recovery, however, was, I believe, almost instantaneous; and then the sight of this unhappy man, regarding me with a look of unutterable astonishment, mixed with concern, presently restored to me my recollection. I arose, though with difficulty; he did the same; the pistols, as I soon saw, were both on ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... awakened at last in all the strength of maturity, that would not let her breathe another breath in peace unless it were her own,—that made her feel as though her chains were chafing into the bone,—that taught her the unutterable vileness and loathliness of bonds,—that convicted her, in being a slave, of being something foul upon the fair face of creation. She sat casting about for ways of escape. It was absurd to think she could again blunder on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... entangled thoughts. Do not suffer me to continue in a state of delusion, if thou perceivest it to be such. Be explicit; tell me if thou dost but so much as forebode: for at moments I myself despond; though at others I am wasted to the heaven of heavens, to certainty, and bliss unutterable. If I deceive myself?—Well!—And if I do, what is to follow?—Rashness?—Cowardice?—What! Basely abandon duty, virtue, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... the painter, perched upon his steps, kept glancing at her, but did not speak a word. Unutterable sadness stole over her, and she felt afraid of fainting, no longer knowing whether she was suffering from the cold or from a despair that had come from afar, and the bitterness of which she felt to be rising within her. Her fatigue became so great ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... by a trail of phosphorescent fire. Each revolution of the propeller drew from the ocean treasure-house opulent globes of golden light that danced and sparkled in the tumbling waters. It was a night that pulsated with the romance and abandon of the south, a night when the heart might throb with unutterable longings, and the blood tingle in the veins under the stress of an emotion at ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... forth. Then, as the last fades, and the arch of storied light itself dissolves and melts, with one all-absorbing passion of eternal devotion flooding her whole being, Hazel turns to Him who has kept her beside Him throughout, her hand retained in His. For one moment she beholds Him, the Unutterable One; and in His Sacred Face she reads, amid ineffable love and infinite majesty, a look of gratitude. And once more the Divine accents ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... secondly, it was deemed a blessing to humanity to tear the Jewish children from their homes, parents and religion, and to bring them up in the only saving Catholic faith. Far, far from all that was dear to them, in a strange locality, among hostile people, exposed to unutterable hardships and rigorous discipline, these unfortunate beings dragged out their wretched existence. Fully half of their number died of exposure, wearing away their poor lives in a vain longing for home and friends, while the remainder survived, only ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... did not see the qualm that seized me on the doorstep. A revulsion so violent that it nearly made me sick then and there; and if some one had seized me by the nape of my neck, and landed me straightway at my desk in Uncle Henry's office, would, I believe, have left me tamed for life. For if this unutterable vileness of sights and sounds and smells which hung around the dark entry of the slop shop were indeed the world, I felt a sudden and most vehement conviction that I would willingly renounce the ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... him. Is not this secret rule, made to kindle or glut the wildest ambition, as it reaches from the cradle to the grave, from the laborer's hovel to the royal palace, from palace to the papal chair? What career in all the world presents such splendid openings? what unutterable scorn ought I not feel for the bright butterfly life of early days, when we made so many envy us? Don't you remember, Herminia?" he added, with ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... unutterable anxiety," he writes again. "God grant us wisdom and fortitude! Should the opposition be suppressed, should this country submit, what infamy, what ruin, God forbid! Death in any ...
— The American Revolution and the Boer War, An Open Letter to Mr. Charles Francis Adams on His Pamphlet "The Confederacy and the Transvaal" • Sydney G. Fisher
... miles he could not have been more exhausted. His breast heaved with every spasmodic breath he drew. His shoulder blades throbbed like an aching tooth. His dripping palm was utterly numb. For a few brief, precious seconds he sat upon the limb with a sense of unutterable relief, and mopped his beaded forehead. And the sun's full, round face ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... flower-sprite flew through the dense shrubbery of a garden. The glory of it in the dimmed moonlight was beyond the power of mortal lips to say. An intoxicatingly sweet cool breath of dew and slumbering flowers transformed all things into unutterable blessings. The lilac grapes of the acacias sparkled in freshness, the June rose-tree looked like a small blooming heaven hung with red lamps, the white stars of the jasmine glowed palely, sadly, and poured out their ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... between them; silence that had in it a throbbing heart of things unutterable; silence that was an accusation, a judgment of the man that ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair
... She was hanging over the bed, watching every difficult breath with unutterable agony. The child had only begun to droop a week ago, had been positively ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... I realised suddenly that I was making an unutterable fool of myself. I was talking as I never talked in my life before, saying out loud the sort of things I have carefully schooled myself neither to feel ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... kites high above mankind? Kites, that was it, contraptions of tissue paper held at the end of a string, ornaments not to be taken seriously. He thought of all the long procession of men who had been touched by the unutterable futility of the lives of men, who had tried by phrases to make things otherwise, who had taught unworldliness. Dim enigmatic figures they were—Democritus, Socrates, Epicurus, Christ; so many of them, and so vague in the silvery mist of history that ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... the night air a wail so indescribable that the very marrow in Nigel's bones seemed to shrivel up. It ceased, but again broke forth louder than before, increasing in length and strength, until his ears seemed to tingle with the sound, and then it died away to a sigh of unutterable woe. ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... fruit-trees the saddening silhouette of the town drifts across the land. The violet spaces between the houses are the very saddest, and the spare furrows are patiently drawn, and so the execution is in harmony with and accentuates the unutterable monotony of the peasant's lot. The sky, too, is vague and empty, and out of its deathlike, creamy hollow the first shadows are blown into the pallid face of a void evening. The picture tells of the melancholy ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... fiendish fit of laughter, and fell back on his pillow, dark with rage and the unutterable fury that made of his being a volcano. The two men had been standing dumb before him, Donal pained for the man on whom this phial of devilish wrath had been emptied, he white and trembling with dismay—an abject creature, crushed ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... old woman, throwing up her hands in a gesture of unutterable disgust; and then, catching my eye, her wrinkled old lips parted in a ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... At some unutterable village we went into a little church, where we saw an old stone image of a warrior, lying on his back, with his hands clasped. It was the natural son (if I remember rightly) of David, Prince of Wales, and was doubtless the better part of a thousand years old. There was likewise a ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... them, Waiting the unutterable moment of their loss Or utmost gain, as tho' the swinging earth Was emptied of all life, the very air Seemed hollow and unearthly, breathless pause On a great brink. They reached the pool, and Taka Gathered her senses till her eyes were clear As shining wells of truth. She leaned no ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... ink, beams out its wondrous lines to the sense. Bibles may convey, and priests expound, but it is exclusively for the noiseless operation of one's isolated Self, to enter the pure ether of veneration, reach the divine levels, and commune with the unutterable. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... same moment Evelyn stood on her balcony, watching the evening. The park was breathless, and the sky rose high and pale, and calm as marble. But the houses seemed to speak unutterable things, and she closed the window and stood looking across the room. Then walking towards the sofa as if she were going to sit down, she flung herself upon it and buried her face among the cushions. She lay there weeping, and when she raised her face she dashed the tears from her streaming cheeks, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... there was no passion, no fierceness of desire in his voice, only unutterable tenderness. "Beloved, please God you will find it in your heart to be good to me. All my thoughts are yours, but for that one thing over which I need your faith. . . . I think no man ever loved a woman ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... they could get.... If the two Miss Pecksniffs and Mrs. Todgers had perished by spontaneous combustion, and the serenade had been in honour of their ashes, it would have been impossible to surpass the unutterable despair expressed in that one chorus: 'Go where glory waits thee.' It was a requiem, a dirge, a moan, a howl, a wail, a lament, an abstract of everything that is ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... moulded by external impressions, he became irrevocably enamoured of such little communities as he had lived in, or was describing, and imbibed all the prejudices against the Church of Rome, which have naturally, from close proximity, and the endurance of unutterable evils at its hands, been ever prevalent among the Calvinists of Geneva. These causes have tinged his otherwise impartial views with two signal prejudices, which appear in all his writings where these ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... in silence until they came to the end of the avenue, and turned. It was no idle silence: the silence of two beings who have naught to say. It was a grave, portentous silence, occasioned by the unutterable much in the mind of one, and by the other's apprehension of it. At last she spoke, to ask him ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... she turned the handle of the door, and walked through into the room. And then, to her unutterable relief, she saw that Jervis looked exactly as usual, except that his face, instead of being pale, as it had been the last ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... return for you," he whispered. "Fear nothing, my charming friend. Say to yourself, 'Surville is the soul of honor! Surville is devoted to me!'" He struck his breast; he again forgot the obscurity in the room, and cast one look of unutterable homage at his charming friend. "A bientot!" he cried, and kissed his ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... red cheeks and my plough-boy appetite would scarcely distress her now," returned Hatty, rather bitterly. "Mr Crossland is coming for me—I must go." And while she held my hand, I was amazed to hear a low whisper, in a voice of unutterable longing,—"Cary, pray ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... creation aspires, out of the night of despair, into the cool freshness of dawn and on to the sun of noon. Let us be patient and follow each his path, waiting on the word of God till He be pleased to reveal it. For His way is not hard, it is joy and peace unutterable. And those who wait in faith He will bless ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... and preternatural determination that was almost entirely infantine. And while they did so he continued slowly to expand in size and to deepen in colour until mortality seemed to drop from him. He ceased to be a man and became a phenomenon, a purple thing that journeyed towards some unutterable end, portentous as marching judgment, tragic as fate, searching as epidemic, and yet heavily painted and generally touched up by the brush of some humorous demon, such as lays about him in preparation for Christmas pantomime, sworn to provide the giants' faces and ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... poet in 1835; but what were those of 1805-15,—nay, of 1825? For twenty years after the date of that letter to Mr. Wordsworth above referred to, language was exhausted, ingenuity was put on the rack, in the search after images and expressions vile enough—insolent enough—to convey the unutterable contempt avowed for all that he had written, by the fashionable critics. One critic—who still, I believe, edits a rather popular journal, and who belongs to that class, feeble, fluttering, ingenious, who make it their highest ambition not to lead, but, with a slave's ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... pitched from him the fag-ends of his cigarettes. And the long sigh he had heaved, hearing of reprieve, had been only half relief. Then, with incredible swiftness there had rushed through him a feeling of unutterable joy and hope. Clean away—into a new country, a new life! The girl and he! Out there he wouldn't care, would rejoice even to have squashed the life out of such a noisome beetle of a man. Out there! Under a new sun, where blood ran quicker than in this foggy land, and people took justice ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... significant signs by which the adherents of Don Carlos were wont to recognise each other. He had not yet recovered from this last surprise, when he was ushered into a room where three persons were assembled. One of these was an aide-de-camp of Cordova, Herrera was another, and in the third, to his unutterable astonishment and ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... "It shows we shouldn't go anywhere without our first cousin once removed. We just began to talk, here in the boat, and the water went away and left us." Then she laughed, and Mark laughed too, and Carnaby's look of unutterable scorn seemed to have no effect upon them. They might almost have been laughing at him, their mirth was so senseless, ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... wall until they came to the usual waiting spot, and as soon as I put a finger against the wall the maimed creature would crawl to the usual place on my hand for breakfast. Indeed, the long years of solitude had produced in me such an unutterable longing for the companionship of something which had life that I never destroyed any kind of insect which found its way into my cell—even when mosquitoes lit on my face I always let them have their fill undisturbed, and felt well ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... the ear of Him who sitteth upon the Throne; and may He commission the angels of wrath to bear the curse, and heap it upon the head of the guilty author of all this wretchedness, and of the unutterable ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... back in the angle of the wall, his shoulders elevated to the level of his ears, his hands before his face, palms outward, the fingers spread and crooked like claws; the white face turned upward on the retracted neck had an expression of unutterable fright, the mouth half open, the eyes incredibly expanded. He was stone dead. Yet, with the exception of a bowie-knife, which had evidently fallen from his own hand, not another object was in ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... retired to dress for luncheon; but Geraldine did not even look toward him. She was lying deep in the chair, apparently relaxed and limp; but every nerve in her was at tension, every delicate muscle taut and rigid, and in her heart was anger unutterable, and close, very close to the lids which shadowed with their long fringe the brown eyes' velvet, ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... them. The seditious multitudes, by murders and massacres, have committed outrages against them, if possible, still more violent and tragical. Besides their common share in the sufferings of society, they have undergone a series of horrid and unutterable calamities, which no other description of men has ever experienced in any age, or in any country. Princes and people, Pagans, Mahometans, and Christians, disagreeing in so many things, have united in ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... left found them perched upon the orchard stile, in that stage of intimacy that permitted him to sit at her feet and toy pensively with the tassel on her girdle while his eyes said the unutterable things that his ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... communications; we are only beginning to recognize the abnormal and exceptional spiritual condition with which Saint Paul was familiar, when, whether in the body or out of it, he could not say,—God only knows,—he was transported to the third Heaven and heard unutterable things." ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... you can look back with joy and thankfulness and give thanks to God for having granted you this occasion of laying the first foundation of a pious honourable zealous christian life. And if, as may so happen, there be at this moment in these benches any poor soul who has had the unutterable misfortune to lose God's holy grace and to fall into grievous sin, I fervently trust and pray that this retreat may be the turning point in the life of that soul. I pray to God through the merits of His zealous servant Francis ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... heart contracted violently at the youthful yet mature back toward him. She turned slowly, a hand resting on the table, and Calvin Stammark's senses swam. An inner confusion invaded him, pierced by a sharp unutterable longing. ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... in a low voice, "I can give you loyalty, admiration, respect and my life to use as you see fit to use it. I give as freely as I can. My love I do not refuse—it is just ... just that it is not mine to give." She spoke with unutterable weariness. "I seem to bring only sorrow to those who ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... Halbpfennig for a lifetime! Yet, am I happy? No—far from happy! The lovely English comdienne—the beautiful Julia, whose dramatic ability is so overwhelming that our audiences forgive even her strong English accent—that rare and radiant being treats my respectful advances with disdain unutterable! And yet, who knows? She is haughty and ambitious, and it may be that the splendid change in my fortunes may work a corresponding change ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... hold to the severe doctrines popularly known as Calvinism, they repudiate all the great liberal scholars who refuse to believe and teach conceptions of God which were unquestioningly accepted in a former age, but which the enlightenment of the present century shrinks from with unutterable horror. Unless Dr. Briggs proves a dishonest man and recants he must leave Union Theological Seminary, if that institution remains ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... repeated the order, without the slightest expectation that it would be fulfilled; and the man—who would have plunged into a blazing bonfire if he had been so ordered—advanced, and, to the unutterable astonishment of himself, the king, and in fact the whole concourse of natives, raised the gigantic structure to his shoulders and held it there ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... which I personated every animal, besides playing ostrich and armadillo, and a great many disagreements, the afternoon wore to its close, and my heart slowly lightened. Only an hour or two more, and the children would be in bed for the night, and then I would enjoy, in unutterable measure, the peaceful hours which would be mine. Even now they were inclined to behave themselves; they were tired and hungry, and stretched themselves on the floor, to await dinner. I embraced the opportunity to return to my book, but I had hardly read a ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... melted in one rapid and comprehensive reexperience, and all future inheritance gleamed in promise before our enraptured vision, and we are hurried on with electric speed to hitherto unsealed heights of feeling, whence we catch faint glimpses of the unutterable mysteries of our being, and foreshadowings of a far-off, glorified existence. The eloquence of earth and sky and air breathed more than language could have uttered, and, as my eyes met the eyes of Blanche, the question of my heart was asked and answered, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... from afar are brought; Who of thy words dost make a mock apparel, And fittest to unutterable thought The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol; Thou faery voyager! that dost float 5 In such clear water, that thy boat May rather seem To brood on air [A] than on an earthly stream; Suspended in a stream as clear as sky, Where ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... of the sacrifice; I know the glorious prospects you relinquish by renouncing the hand of Leonor. Yes, I am indeed, aware of all the distressing circumstances that may ensue from the resolution you have taken. But, oh, Lope! will not the unutterable love, the fervid devotion of your poor Theodora, afford you some requital for the advantages which your ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... to her husband as he hung dead on a beam from the window. The daughter sunk to the ground; but her mother, as if petrified at the sight, stood silent and motionless, gazing on her dead husband with that wild keen eye of unutterable woe, which pierces all hearts. Presently, as if braced up with despair, she seemed quite recovered, and calmly begged one of the soldiers to assist her to take down the corpse and lay it in the bottom of the chair. Then taking her seat, with her ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... see her beloved husband in this distress without discovering herself, to the unutterable joy of Posthumus, who was thus relieved from a weight of guilt and woe, and restored to the good graces of the dear lady he had ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... Saxon, wiping the moist merriment from her eyes. "And your cap, Leslie! And that bonnet! And this unutterable old oddity of a gown! Who did contrive it all? and where did they come from? You'll carry off the glory of the evening. It ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... the seated figure was projected against the sky; Simon's face was turned toward the west; the West that, for him, was the future, but which for Linda represented all the past. This conviction flooded her with unutterable sadness. A sense of failure weighed on her, no less heavy for the fact that it was perpetually vague. Her thoughts gathered about Dodge himself; and she recalled the curious vividness of his vision of her as a child, perhaps ten. She, too, tried to ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... scenes like these, what art could never grasp, what words can never formulate, the heart of the boy then imbibed, assimilated, resolved in his innermost being. There awoke in him then those mysterious feelings, those unutterable yearnings, that pensive joy in the contemplation of Nature, which leavened all his subsequent life, and the influence of which is so perceptible in his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... to him as included within his pastoral duties to pray with the stricken slave; and poor Chloe, oppressed with an unutterable sense of loneliness, retired to her straw pallet, and late in the night sobbed herself to sleep. She woke with a weight on her heart, as if there was somebody dead in the house; and quickly there rushed upon her the remembrance that her darling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... and to resolve to follow them. They did not believe that a high spirit, in the true sense of the word, meant a spirit broken down altogether and brought into subjection to its owner's, not another's, will. By no means. A strong mind with the Deemas-eagles meant unutterable and unalterable obstinacy, blind as a bat, with the great guns blazing all round, and the colours nailed to the mast. High spirit with them meant the inclination—ever present, always strong, and often asserted—to seize all the rest of the world, ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... her, there came into his face an expression of unutterable joy. He made an effort to raise himself, but in vain. "Come," he murmured, "come near me, Olive—my little Olive that loves ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... burned the midnight oil, and looked through ruddy wine at the small hours chasing each other over the dial. For hours, almost whole days, he would sit silent at the helm of his boat on the Isis, his rapt eye peopling the vacant air with unutterable visions. He swam like a dolphin, rode like a Centaur, and De Quincey called him the best unprofessional male dancer he had ever seen. Three times he was vanquished by a huge shoemaker,—so the story goes,—champion of the "Town": at the fourth meeting, the Gentleman Commoner ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... under the old trees was sung by the choir with fine effect; a short, fervent prayer, the reading of two or three portions of one of the gospels, and a few words of sweet and simple fervor, expressive of a great love and sacrifice, and the unutterable hope and rest of its grateful acknowledgment in the public act about to be performed, followed; and then the believing, trembling girl was led into the translucent waters, which for a single instant closed over her, and was returned, with a little cry of ecstasy, to her friends. Another ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... "Oh, unutterable horrors! That's the worst you ever perpetrated!" cried her father. "Just for that you shall eat another ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... said he, between his clenched teeth, "you are an unutterable wretch! I could grind your ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... Peloponnesus, Theodore Kolokotrones, Messrs. Kanaris, Botazes, and Bulgaris, General Zavella and Count Metaxas, who will tender to you the thanks of all for your zeal on behalf of their cause." "The Government is seized with unutterable joy at your auspicious arrival," wrote the members of the rival assembly at Egina, on the same day: "the Government wishes you happy success in all your enterprises, and hopes soon to find in you a triumphant ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... iz, iz, of the minie balls everywhere. Ahead I see artillery galloping for the landing, and crowds of men running with almost equal speed, and all in the same direction. I even see the purple tinge given by the setting sun to the dust and smoke of battle. I see unutterable defeat, the success of the rebellion, a great catastrophe, a moral ...
— "Shiloh" as Seen by a Private Soldier - With Some Personal Reminiscences • Warren Olney
... realise to herself the thing proposed to her. She had said very little to her aunt of the nature of the misery which such a marriage seemed to offer to her,—not because her imagination made for her no clear picture on the subject, not because she did not foresee unutterable wretchedness in such a union. The picture of such wretchedness had been very palpable to her. She thought that no consideration on earth would induce her to take that mean-faced old man to her breast as her husband, her lord—as the one being whom she was to love beyond everybody ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... for American Independence was a struggle for Liberty, and was elevated throughout by this holy cause. But the struggle for Slavemonger Independence is necessarily and plainly a struggle for Slavery, and is degraded throughout by the unutterable vileness of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... scarlet underdress; and even she—old woman and fond friend—could not help picturing the gorgeous joy such a fate would give—to have him for a lover! to see his fierce, proud head bent in devotion, to feel his tender caress. Tamara must be an unutterable fool if ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... Divine dignity of that agonised form—forsaken of His Father that we might never be forsaken—I saw great beads of blood break out like sweat upon His brow, and I heard wrung from Him a cry of such unutterable anguish as never before rose from human lips. And at that cry the vision passed, and I awoke to find myself in hell once more, but in my heart there was a stirring as of the wings of hope—the hope which I had ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the force which oppresses while protecting is execrable; why the silly ignorance which views with the same eye the marvels of art, and the products of the rudest industry, excites unutterable contempt; why proud mediocrity, which glories in saying, "I have paid you—I owe ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... Mrs. Dunbar broke down. Once more her head sank, and burying her face in her hands, she wept and sobbed convulsively. Wiggins looked at her, and as he looked there came over his face an expression of unutterable pity and sympathy, but he said not a word. As he looked at her he leaned his head on his hand, and a low, deep, prolonged sigh escaped him, that seemed to come from the ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... Asterfield National a suicide." Bob gave no sign of hearing. He strode with a slow, measured gait, his head erect, his eyes staring ahead at space, a man thinking, thinking, thinking for his salvation. Many hurrying men looked at him, some with an expression of unutterable hatred, as though they wanted to attack him. Then again there were those who called him by name with a laugh of joy; and some turned to watch him in curiosity. It was easy to pick the wounded from those ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... woman in her was stirred to the depths. Young as she was she realized that that ring of sentries about her could mean but one thing. Now, when it was too late, she recalled Seth's many warnings, and bitterly repented her unutterable folly in ever going near this wild, untried ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... and a long, kind, silent glance from Miss May Danvers. Where had been my eyes? She was tall, stately, twenty-five, had large dark eyes, and long dark lashes! Again the changes of the dance brought her near me; I threw (or strove to throw) unutterable meanings into my eyes, and cast them upon hers. She seemed startled, looked suddenly away, looked back to me, and—blushed. I knew her for what is called "a nice girl"—that is, tolerably frank, gently feminine, and not dangerously intelligent. Was it possible that I had ...
— Who Was She? - From "The Atlantic Monthly" for September, 1874 • Bayard Taylor
... sister had ridiculed her and called her names—a terrible thing for a child. One had called her a caterpillar, another a catamount, and a third a coward. And added to all this was a sudden and unutterable horror of the color of yellow, formerly her favorite hue. She mentally resolved never to wear that horrible yellow night dress, which had drawn upon her so many odious epithets, even though she froze to death ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... middle-aged men do not seem over-worked, and lead a mere animal existence, in itself not peculiarly cruel or distressing, but with a constant element of fear and uncertainty, "and the trifling evils of unrequited labor, ignorance the most profound (to which they are condemned by law), and the unutterable injustice which precludes them from all the merits and all the benefits of voluntary exertion, and the ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... striking at some hidden, deep-seated pain in Lydia's heart, caused her to wince and turn pale. She rose from her seat, shaking her apron as she did so. But before she left the room she cast a look of unutterable aversion on both ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... Gloom therefore unutterable gathered upon his face; his features fixed themselves into such rigidity of grief that they became more expressive than if they had been distorted by passionate emotions; and over his brow collected ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... repentant stood Praying; for from the mercy-seat above Prevenient grace descending had removed The stony from their hearts, and made new flesh Regenerate grow instead; that sighs now breathed Unutterable; which the Spirit of prayer Inspired, and winged for Heaven with speedier flight Than loudest oratory: Yet their port Not of mean suitors; nor important less Seemed their petition, than when the ancient pair In fables old, less ancient yet than these, Deucalion and chaste Pyrrha, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... it was light Morgan intently watched the sea. There was a sense of companionship in it which helped to alleviate his unutterable loneliness. And he was a man to whom loneliness in itself was a punishment. There were too many things in the past that had a habit of making their presence felt when he was alone, for him ever to desire to be solitary. Presently the sun disappeared with the startling suddenness of tropic ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... The unutterable pathos of George's accompaniment to that "two" we were, in our then state of depression, unable to bear. Harris sobbed like a little child, and the dog howled till I thought his heart or his jaw ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... history of empires or of nations on paper, but she writes her own history on the imperishable mind of her child. That tablet and that history will remain indelible when time shall be no more. That history each mother shall meet again, and read, with eternal joy, or unutterable grief, in the coming ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson |
