"Indefinable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... studied composure and sobriety of his mien, and with his quaint and sad apparel." It fits well with all that we know of Lord George Gordon, to learn that there was nothing fierce or cruel in his face, whose mildness and whose melancholy were chiefly varied by a haunting air of "indefinable uneasiness, which infected those who looked upon him and filled them with a kind of pity for the man: though why it did so they would have had some trouble to explain." Such was the strange fanatic whose name was ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... vigorous. He also prided himself on drinking more champagne than most men could support, and on leaping his horse over a four-foot wall in true sporting style. To these various accomplishments he was indebted for the friendship and esteem of the indefinable class of beings known as 'young men,' who swarm upon our boulevards towards eight in the evening. Shooting parties, country excursions, races, bachelors' dinners and suppers, were his favourite pastimes. Twenty times a-day he declared himself ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... Highness entered the courtyard, the princess flung herself at his feet, but he bent and raised her, and gazed at her for some time, struck with her grace and beauty, and also with the indefinable air of courts that seemed to hang round this country girl. "They are all worthy one of the other," he said to himself, "and I am not surprised that they think so much of her opinions. I must know ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... contain a single minor note of apology and the country will visualize you at the head of the column. You know this country, and every country, wants a man to lead it of whom it is proud, not because of his talent but because of his personality,—that which is as indefinable as charm in a woman, and I want to see your personality known to the American people, just as well as we know it who sit around the Cabinet table. Your speech glows with it, and that is why it gives me such joy that I can't help ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... overlooked. From where had the American gentleman dropped? Not the sky, assuredly, and there was no place else possible, unless the door of the summer-house. Yes, he had been in the summer-house, and not sleeping either. An indefinable something about his manner informed Gustavo that he was privy to the entire conversation. Gustavo, a picture of guilty remorse, searched his memory for the words he had used. Why, oh why, had he not piled up adjectives? It was the opportunity of a lifetime, ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... As indefinable as it is delightful, it comes with a lightning flash of wit into the dry, theological conversation of the preacher, relieves with its sharp hits the spread-eagle speech of the country orator, brightens with its apt allusions the more refined ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... of Porter and Dixon, a sea of upturned faces, furrowed by lines of anxious interest, had surrounded the Judge's box. Wave on wave the living waters reached back over the grassed lawn to the betting ring. An indefinable feeling that something was wrong had crept into the minds of the ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... under a fixed constitution, but at one heat to strike out a totally new constitution for a great kingdom, and every part of it, from the monarch on the throne to the vestry of a parish? But—"fools rush in where angels fear to tread." In such a state of unbounded power, for undefined and indefinable purposes, the evil of a moral and almost physical inaptitude of the man to the function, must be the greatest we can conceive to happen in the ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... so beautiful as at this period; she had that indefinable beauty that results from joy, from enthusiasm, from success, and that is only the harmony of temperament with circumstances. Her desires, her sorrows, the experience of pleasure, and her ever-young illusions, that had, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... babes had chanced to be in her hospital, she would have given him his medicine with just the same air. Although no one could have specified a lack of courtesy towards a guest—for in my house she played hostess—there was an indefinable touch of cold contumely in her attitude. Whether he felt the hostility as acutely as I did, I cannot say; but he carried it off with a swaggering grace. He bowed to her ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... precious—every inch of them—to be much taken up with discussing him. Other things were of more interest,—sometimes discussion, sometimes information, oftenest of all, talk; and now and then came with the letter some book to give Faith a new bit of reading. Above all, the letters told her—in a sort of indefinable, unconscious way, how much, how much her presence was missed and longed for; it seemed to her as if where one letter laid it down the next took it up—not in word but in atmosphere, and carried it further. In that one respect (though Faith never found it out) the chymical ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... that foretells the twilight. Something of its mysterious and significant solemnity had imparted itself to the man's mood. In the spiritual, as in the material world, are signs and presages of night. Rarely meeting her look, and whenever he did so conscious of the indefinable dread with which, despite their feline beauty, her eyes always affected him, Jenner Brading listened in silence to the story told by Irene Marlowe. In deference to the reader's possible prejudice against the artless method of an unpractised historian the author ventures to ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... provokes curiosity, and his friends noticed and wondered why it was that he was so frequently the theme of their conversation. His simple, unaffected manners were full of suggestion, and in his writings there was always an indefinable rainbow-like promise of ultimate achievement. So, long before he had succeeded in writing a play, detached scenes and occasional verses led his friends into gradual belief that he was one from whom big things might be expected. And when the one-act play which they had all so heartily approved ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... report that the marquise was merely a beautiful idol, virtuous with the virtue of a statue. But though such things might be said and repeated in the absence of the marquise, from the moment that she appeared in a drawing-room, from the moment that her beautiful eyes and sweet smile added their indefinable expression to those brief, hurried, and sensible words that fell from her lips, the most prejudiced came back to her and were forced to own that God had never before created anything that ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... wheels. There was something even more than dignity, an indefinable something, a superiority which Fitzgerald's present attitude of mind could ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... that the mere joy of living would appeal to him as it did now; that the act of breathing, of seeing, of looking on wonders in which his hands had taken no part in the making, would fill him with the indefinable pleasure which had suddenly become his experience. He wondered, as he still stood gazing into the infinity of that other world beyond the Saskatchewan, if romance was really quite dead in him. Always he had laughed at romance. Work—the grim reality of action, of brain fighting brain, ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... passed the conviction deepened in Belle that there was something seriously wrong; she could feel it in the air. It was something more than an accident to Hartigan. There was the indefinable shadow of shame about it. The oppression became unbearable and on leaving Sunday-school, she went down to the doctor's house. He had just got in from a case near Fort Ryan and was eating a belated meal. Belle ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the end, when all broken lights have blended again with the Source Light, I'm not so sure that rainbows will seem less important than rows and rows of arc lights and clusters and clusters of incandescent globes. Are you? I can contract an indefinable sort of heartache from the blue sputter of a city light that snuffs out moon and stars for tired scurrying folks: but the opalescent mist-drift of the Rainbow Falls wove heavens for me in its sheen, and through its whirlwind rifts and crystal flaws, far reaches ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... danced there seemed to be nobody else moving. She filled the hall with grace, and the heart of the spectator with an indefinable longing. She carried strings of bouquets. She made men happy by asking them to hold some of her flowers while she danced; and then, when she returned to take them, the gentlemen were steeped in ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... light shone out behind him filling the room with a glow that left no shadow in it. But he did not see the change, nor hear the step that broke the hush, nor turn to meet the woman who stood waiting for a lover's welcome. An indefinable air of sumptuous life surrounded her, and made the brilliant room a fitting frame for the figure standing there with warm-hued muslins blowing in the wind. A figure full of the affluent beauty of womanhood in its prime, bearing unmistakable marks of the polished pupil of the world ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... quite how undressed a Spaceforce man looked without his blaster. I balanced it on my palm for a minute while Regis Hastur came out of the shadows. He was tall, and had the reddish hair and fair skin of Darkovan aristocracy, and on his face was some indefinable stamp—arrogance, perhaps, or the consciousness that the Hasturs had ruled this world for centuries long before the Terrans brought ships and trade and the universe to their doors. He was looking at me as if he approved of me, and that was one step worse ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... again the subject of their words did not matter; or as if the supreme content of the moment could spare a little benevolence even for these outside things. At last a question was asked which made Betty prick up her ears; this must have been due to something indefinable in the tone of the speakers, for the words ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... most people like a fearful spectre—the good as well as the bad—is a very foolish thing? We are taught, from childhood, to look forward to death as the greatest of all calamities; as a change attended by indefinable terrors. Teachers and preachers ring in our ears the same dread chimes, thrilling the strongest nerves and appalling the stoutest hearts. Death is pictured to us as a grim monster; and we shudder as we look at the ghastly apparition. Now, all this ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... anything? I'm almost certain I heard a sound in the other room!" They both fell to listening intently. Yes, there was a sound, a strange, indefinable one like a soft tiptoeing at long intervals, and even a curious, hoarse breathing. Something was certainly outside ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... must turn to what is in store for you, if you are still content to face the future with me. Position I have none to offer. What is the exact position of the wife of the assistant-accountant of the Co-operative Insurance Office? It is indefinable. What are my prospects? I may become head-accountant. If Dinton died—and I hope he won't, for he is an excellent fellow—I should probably get his berth. Beyond that I have no career. I have some aspirations after literature—a few critical articles ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... his embrace, for a moment her head fell back on his broad shoulder, and she smiled up at him. From her soft, yielding form arose that subtle, familiar perfume, the intoxicating, vague, indefinable aroma of the well groomed woman that never fails to set a man's blood on fire. Bending low until his mouth touched hers, he kissed her until her face glowed under the ardor of his amative caress. But to-day she was not ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... indefinable uneasiness in the presence of these sketches, the same sensation caused by certain Proverbs of Goya which they recalled, or by the reading of Edgar Allen Poe's tales, whose mirages of hallucination ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... was as difficult to read as Colonel Carter's voice had been. It might have meant pleasure at the thought of rest, or anger, or contempt, or almost anything. It was undefined and indefinable. ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... object of your visit?" said the Baronet at last, after a perplexing pause, during which the arms of the Buccaneer were folded on his breast, and his restless and vigilant eyes wandered round the apartment, flashing with an indefinable expression, when they encountered the blue ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... to have shaped itself for his mood. A curious, raw dampness had crept into the still air, and overhead was a level, sullen expanse of gray vapor. Locomotive smoke showed that the light breeze had shifted suddenly to the south, and there was an indefinable attitude of expectancy about, as if the big city with its varied expanse of buildings and vacant lots and snow-filled parks was waiting for something. As he stamped up the front porch steps and kicked the snow from his shoe soles, a fine, almost ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... were wild-eyed hangers-on telling of a flight upward on a fiery chariot, as well as a predicted disappearance and reappearance after three days. Such were the stories being gulped down by the thousands who still clung with an indefinable fascination to the memory of the charlatan. Meantime the soldier Wilkes had died of his injuries, and the coroner's inquiry was to ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... was an excellent musician, however, as well, and played both the violin and the piano better than most amateurs. In fact, it was music that had first brought him and Dorian Gray together—music and that indefinable attraction that Dorian seemed to be able to exercise whenever he wished, and indeed exercised often without being conscious of it. They had met at Lady Berkshire's the night that Rubinstein played there, and after that used to be always seen together at the Opera, and wherever ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... which is the distinguishing essence of eloquence, and the attempts at it. In part this appeal is through the appeal to principles and associations which are close to the heart of the audience, in part through concrete and figurative language, in part through the indefinable thrill and music of style which lies beyond definition ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... got into the privacy of the fo'c'sle neither spoke. She was breathless, partly with indignation, partly with indefinable fear and partly with the breakneck speed at which he had rushed her along the deck. He sat down on the anchor; she stood before him, her back to the rail, which she gripped with her hands. Her first impulse was to shake him thoroughly. But ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... to be exact we mention, as this particular author seems to have done, that she had an "elusive expression," or a penetrating fragrance. Or we say that she moved, the centre of an indefinable nuance. ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... controversy has its origin. We make static what is essentially dynamic in character. We call a process a thing. There is no such "thing" as Freedom; it is a relation between the self and its action. Indeed, it is only characteristic of a self IN ACTION, and so is really indefinable. Viewed after the action, it presents a different aspect; it has then become historical, an event in the past, and so we try to explain it as being caused by former events or conditions. This casting of it on to a ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... of his glass of sherry in silence, and presently rose to go. Coroner Whidden and Mr. Ward had already gone. The guests in the public room were thinning out; a gloom, indefinable and shapeless like the night, seemed to have fallen upon the few that lingered. At a somewhat earlier hour tdhan usual the gas was shut ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... all, recognize a fundamental truth. We can be the best clothed, best fed, best housed people in the world, enjoying clean air, clean water, beautiful parks, but we could still be the unhappiest people in the world without an indefinable spirit—the lift of a driving dream which has made America, from its beginning, the hope ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Almost every devout admirer of the old bards, if demanded his opinion of their productions, would mention vaguely, yet with perfect sincerity, a sense of dreamy, wild, indefinite, and he would perhaps say, indefinable delight; on being required to point out the source of this so shadowy pleasure, he would be apt to speak of the quaint in phraseology and in general handling. This quaintness is, in fact, a very powerful ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... be conceived to be drawn two diverging lines which at first are at a definite distance apart, but are produced to infinity, it is certain that the distance between the two lines will be continually increased, until at length it changes from definite to indefinable. As these absurdities follow, it is said, from considering quantity as infinite, the conclusion is drawn that extended substance must necessarily be finite, and, consequently, cannot appertain to the nature ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... repeated the words in a tone that was indefinable, yet a tone vehement in its incredulous questioning. "Three years?" she said again, as one refusing ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... danger that such a substitution may be unconsciously made, but to express a religious life which cannot be expressed without the aid of aesthetic symbols. The work of the intellect is to analyze and define. But the infinite is in the nature of the case indefinable, and it is with the infinite religion has to do. All that theology can hope to accomplish is to define certain provinces in the illimitable realm of truth; to analyze certain experiences in a life which transcends ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... port-hole in the yet colourless dawn he saw the reddish water of a river with black-hulled sailing-boats on it and a few lanky little steamers of a pattern he had never seen before. Again he breathed deep of the new indefinable ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... should imitate and revere. Had such a character as we have endeavoured feebly to sketch, met an individual enveloped in a shapeless cylindrical tube of pale Macintosh—impossible for taste—incapable of pockets—indefinite and indefinable—we question whether he would have regarded him in the light of a maniac, an incendiary, or a foreign spy—whether he would not have handed him immediately over to the exterminators of the law, as a being too depraved, too degraded for human sympathy. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... forests. But consider the legends on a chart even of the North Sea, of the world beneath the fathoms—the Silver Pits, the Dowsing Ground, the Leman Bank, the Great Fisher Ground, the Horn Reef, the Witch Ground, and the Great Dogger Bank! Strange, that indefinable implication of a word! I remember that, when a child, I was awake one night listening to a grandfather's clock talking quietly to itself in its long box, and a brother sat up in bed and whispered: "Look, the Star in the East." I turned, and one bright eye of the ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... never seen him. Another complete contrast to Diogenes was Dr. Conway, of Virginia, our Chesterfield. His perfect manners and courtly observance of the smallest requirements of good breeding and etiquette made us feel quite as if we were lord and ladies. Dr. Conway had a way of conveying subtle indefinable flattery which was very elevating to one's self-esteem. Others enjoyed it in full, but often, just as our Chesterfield had interviewed me, infusing even into the homely subject of diet-lists much that was calculated to puff up my vanity, in would stalk Diogenes, who never failed to bring me to ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... Lyman ordered cigars and liqueurs, and with the three others returned to the main room of the club. However, their former place in the round window was occupied. A middle-aged man, with iron grey hair and moustache, who wore a frock coat and a white waistcoat, and in some indefinable manner suggested a retired naval officer, was sitting at their table smoking a long, thin cigar. At sight of him, Presley became animated. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... penitence. Where one is, there the other is, and where both are, there is conversion. Penitence, therefore, is not something that goes before conversion, and faith something that follows after, and conversion an indefinable something sandwiched in between, as some seem to imagine; but penitence and faith are the constituent elements that make ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... scarcely perceptible: momentary touches of fingertips, meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and lip, faintest tremors. The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life towards another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust. And Lydgate fell to spinning that web from his inward self with wonderful rapidity, in spite of experience supposed to be finished off with the drama of Laure—in ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... both solidly and substantially attired, yet there was an indefinable something about them which proclaimed them to be young men from one of the smaller cities of the ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... up by additions, and so cut up is its space by large frescoed pillars, into sixteen sections, that one steps from brilliant sunshine into deep twilight when he enters the cathedral. It is a sort of church which possesses in a high degree that indefinable charm of sacred atmosphere that tempts one to linger on and on indefinitely within its precincts. Not that it is so magnificent; many churches in the two capitals and elsewhere in Russia are far richer. It is simply ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... situation in which it became necessary to use Lafayette to defend Polignac, the intuition of progress transparent beneath the revolt, the chambers and streets, the competitions to be brought into equilibrium around him, his faith in the Revolution, perhaps an eventual indefinable resignation born of the vague acceptance of a superior definitive right, his desire to remain of his race, his domestic spirit, his sincere respect for the people, his own honesty, preoccupied Louis Philippe almost painfully, and there were moments when strong and courageous as he was, he was overwhelmed ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... with an indefinable expression. Jinnie flushed as she scanned for a moment her calico skirt and overhanging blouse. Then with a tragic expression she released her hands, and ran her fingers through her hair. With such long curls did she look like ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... essence of her which had eluded his grasp throughout six months of personal contact, and years of unwearied devotion. Of the deeper, hidden forces at work on his behalf, he guessed nothing. Only he was aware of subtle changes taking place in her—of an indefinable softening and uplifting of the whole woman, that increased tenfold his longing for a reunion which promised to be closer, more consummate than the best that ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... held her, and at the sound of that sudden note of passion in his tone she felt some new, indefinable emotion stir within her that was half pain, half pleasure. Her eyelids closed, and she stretched out her hands a little gropingly, almost as if she were trying to ward away something ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... of this kind were passing in my mind, and it was from these I drew that indefinable presentiment that I should ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... of thought pleased her, and soothed in some way an indefinable rasping sense of the general futility of all feeling and all striving. Surely she, with her young-old heart, her world-worn memories, and her youth that never was, should know that worldly-wise dictum ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... trousers a bluish aggressive tint, that I couldn't pass for metropolitan. His boots were worse—of some wrong sort of patent leather. But they ought not to have altered the man as I felt that he was altered. . . . Yes, cheapened and coarsened, in some indefinable way. His hair had thinned and showed a bald patch: not a large patch: still, there it was. His shape had been rather noticeably slim. I won't say that it had grown pursy, but it had run to seed somehow. Least of all I liked the ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and supplied the body with materials to feed it, as we pour oil into a burning lamp. Others imagined they had discovered something invisible and incorporeal in the air, that important medium which supports the life of man. They pretended to catch, refine, reduce, and materialize this indefinable something, so that it might be swallowed in the form of powders, and drops; that, by its penetrating powers, it might insinuate itself into the whole animal frame, invigorate, and consequently qualify it for ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... said, and without waiting for me to tell him, slipped into the clean shirt which Godfrey had brought, attached the collar and tied the tie, all this quite composedly and without hesitation or clumsiness. Yet I felt, in some indefinable way, that something was seriously wrong with him. His eyes were vacant and his face flabby, as though the muscles were relaxed. It gave me the feeling that ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... Abstract names may be defined by defining the corresponding concrete: the definition of 'human nature' is the same as of 'man.' But if the corresponding concrete be a simple sensation (as blue), this being indefinable, the abstract (blueness) is ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... banished to the desert, where he is overwhelmed by a sandstorm. 'Die Koenigin von Saba' is a strong and effective opera. The local colour is managed very skilfully, and the orchestration is novel and brilliant. Yet there is very little of that indefinable quality, which we call sincerity, about the score. It was happily described at its production as a clever imitation of good music. The influence of Wagner is strongest in the love music, which owes much to 'Tristan ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... Chaucer and the ballads of Robin Hood; in spite of deep and sometimes disastrous changes of national policy, that note is still unmistakable in Shakespeare, in Johnson and his friends, in Cobbett, in Dickens. It is vain to dream of defining such vivid things; a national soul is as indefinable as a smell, and as unmistakable. I remember a friend who tried impatiently to explain the word "mistletoe" to a German, and cried at last, despairing, "Well, you know holly—mistletoe's the opposite!" I do not commend this logical method in the comparison of plants or nations. But ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... naturally turned upon the subject of their expedition, on the manner in which it had been brought about, and on the hopes and fears they entertained respecting it. Of the former they had many, of the latter few—none perhaps beyond that indefinable uneasiness which is inseparable from suddenly awakened hope, and ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... conversing by fits and starts. Once in the salon an indefinable uncertainty and dread took possession of us. The count flung himself into an armchair, absorbed in reverie, which his wife, who knew the symptoms of his malady and could foresee an outbreak, was careful not to interrupt. I also kept silence. As she gave me no hint to leave, ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... possession is personality—that indefinable, imponderable something which sums up what we are, and makes us different from others; that distinctive force of self which operates appreciably on those whose lives we touch. It is personality alone that makes ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... posture and gesture emanated a certain indefinable force that attracted men to him, and created in them an enthusiasm for his cause. Old and young who came under his influence were ready to do ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... She was certainly pretty, with that proud virginal beauty which often bears itself on the defensive, in our modern world where a certain superfluity of women has not tended to chivalry. But how little prettiness matters, beside the other thing!—the indefinable, irresistible something—which gives the sceptre and the crown! All the time she was listening to Mrs. Penfold's chatter, and the daughter's occasional words, Victoria Tatham was on the watch for this something; and not without jealousy and a critical mind. She had been ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ) is considered by some critics to be the leading exponent in the country of "the manner of de Maupassant, enveloped by an indefinable atmosphere that seems to bring back Edgar Allan Poe." He has been director-general of public instruction in Rio de Janeiro, professor at the Normal School and the National School of Fine Arts, and also a deputy from Pernambuco. With the surprising ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... appalling ennui that is trying me, sunk in this company, in the midst of the country, far from my own people, she does not reply, but her lips close tight, her eyes take on an indefinable expression of melancholy and of pity. One day she said to me in a dry tone: "Oh, liberty's worth nothing to you," alluding to a conversation she had overheard between Francis and me, discussing the charming allurements of Parisian women; then she softened and added with her fascinating little moue: ...
— Sac-Au-Dos - 1907 • Joris Karl Huysmans
... it to yourself, now, Le Breton. Suppose I were to tell you my father was a working shoemaker, for example, or a working carpenter, you'd never think anything more about it; but if I were to tell you he was a grocer, or a baker, or a confectioner, or an ironmonger, you'd feel a certain indefinable class barrier set up between us two immediately and ever after. Isn't it ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... the laughter and talking before it growing louder. Each grey marksman twitched his cartridge box in place, glanced at his musket, glanced toward his immediate officer. Across the intervals ran an indefinable spark, a bracing, a tension. Some of the men moistened their lips, one or two uttered a little sigh, the hearts of all beat faster. The step had quickened. The trees grew more thinly, came down to a mere bordering fringe of sumach. Cleave motioned to the ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... at first. There is no wonder that the work inspired such reverence, for it is a natural characteristic of Spinello to endow his figures with a certain simple grace, partaking of modesty and holiness, so that his saints and particularly his Virgins breathe an indefinable sanctity and divinity which inspire men with devotion. This may be seen also in a Madonna which is on the side of the Albergetti, in one on an outside wall of the Pieve in Seteria, and in another of the ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... every turn—contented with their absence from the gay flashing world of cities, and raising proudly their moss-covered roofs between the branches of wide spreading oaks, and haughty pines, and locusts, burdening the air with perfume. Apple Orchard had about it an indefinable air of moral happiness and domestic comfort. It seemed full of memories, too; and you would have said that innumerable weddings and christenings had taken place there, time out of mind, leaving their influence on the old homestead, on its very dormer-windows, and ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... the air was cool and fresh. The stars, still discernible, were fading in the light of the approaching dawn; and as he left the grotto he hastened, drawn by an indefinable and insensible impulse, to seek the place where he had left the body of the ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... assented Virginia absently, and Wiley rose suddenly to go. There was something indefinable that stood between them, and no effort of his could break it down. He shook hands perfunctorily and started down the gallery and then abruptly he turned and ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... obviously no explanation of our experience. Hanslick has but shown what music is not; Edmund Gurney's eloquent book, "The Power of Sound," is completely agnostic in its conclusion that music is a unique, indefinable, indescribable phenomenon, which possesses, indeed, certain analogues with other physical and psychical facts, but is coextensive with none. Spencer's theory of music as glorified speech is not only in a yet unexplained ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... after their early supper that Coleman came down to camp at the heels of Chip and the Old Man. Straightway he sought out Andy like a man who has something on his mind; though Andy did not in the least know what it was, he recognized the indefinable symptoms and braced himself mentally, half suspecting that it was something about that blue roan again. He was getting a little bit tired of the blue roan—enough so that, though he had chosen him for his string, he had not yet put saddle to his back, but waited until the roundup started ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... another. There was undoubtedly a devil, else how could good Doctor Luther have thrown his inkstand at him? But he had never been seen in Doctor Lebensfunke's neighborhood; and, on the whole, Lottchen was inclined to attribute the Herr Doctor's trouble to an indefinable something whose nature was broadly hinted at by more tapping ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... climbed it, and discovered that from the summit they could see all Muanza harbor from the shore line to the island in the distance. Sitting up there, they presently spotted a native dhow drawn up with bow to the beach with the indefinable, yet unescapable ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... trio approaching the platform, composed of his valued friend, Samuel Burnett—his fine face alight with his purpose—and two gray-bearded men of somewhat unpromising exterior, but plainly of prominence in the church, by the indefinable look of them. He watched the three climb the pulpit stairs, and come up to the figure in the chair—Sam, ...
— On Christmas Day In The Evening • Grace Louise Smith Richmond
... Wolfram with anti-dogmatic views, and with a certain Protestant preference of simple repentance and amendment to the performance of stated rites and penances. What is unmistakable is the way in which he lifts the story, now by phrase, now by verse effect, now by the indefinable magic of sheer poetic handling, out of ordinary ways into ways that are not ordinary. There may perhaps be allowed to be a certain want of "architectonic" in him. He has not made of Parzival and Condwiramurs, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... and why? An author! To her he would be no less interesting because he was unsuccessful. Stories ... love stories: and to-morrow she would know the joy of reading them! It was almost unbelievable; it was too good to be true. It filled her with indefinable fear. Until now none of her prayers had ever been answered. Why should God give particular attention to such a prayer, when He had ignored all others? Certainly there was ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... very powerful influence over his destiny, nevertheless. There was a strange fascination in the society of the Austrian widow—a nameless, indefinable charm, which few were able to resist. A bitter experience of vice and folly had robbed Reginald Eversleigh's heart and mind of all youth's freshness and confidence, and for him this woman seemed only what she was, an adventuress, dangerous to ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... no one in Cannes; she knew few if any Englishmen, yet the face, with its combined hint of cynicism and petulance, was undoubtedly familiar. It stirred some vibration in her memory, recent, and in an indefinable way unpleasant. Where ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... except that women were shut up in harems and wore veils if they stirred out of doors? Such customs could scarcely make a whole country mysterious. But now, though he had not yet landed, he knew that he would be compelled to acknowledge the indefinable mystery at which he had sneered. Already he fancied an elusive influence, like the touch of a ghost. It was in the pulsing azure of the sky; in the wild forms of the Atlas and far Kabyle mountains stretching into vague, ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... on him quickly, and for a single swiftly passing instant the velvety eyes were deep wells of soberness with an indefinable underdepth of sorrow in them. Griswold had a sudden conviction that for the first time in his knowing of her he was looking into the soul of ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... pleasure. They agree with Erasmus, that "it is a foolish error to believe that happiness is dependent upon things; it is dependent entirely upon one's opinion of them." The indefinite has no terrors for them, they delight indeed in the indefinable. They have done little in great sculpture and architecture, or the founding and ruling of colonies, as compared with their supreme achievements in music, in ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... her cause, he was a little surprised to notice an indefinable but evident change in the rustic beauty's manner. Perhaps she disliked to hear a stranger accuse her father—however truly—of horribly bad taste, but this did not occur to Ferdinand, who had intended to show her that a gentleman ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... moral quality in a good temper—that change of principle could not much affect it. And then she was never more winning; perhaps her beauty had taken on a more refined quality from her illness abroad; perhaps it was that indefinable knowledge of the world, which is recognized as well in dress as in manner, which increased her attractiveness. This was quite apart from the fact that she was not so sympathetically companionable to us as she once was, and it was this very attractiveness of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... two articles, as better than nothing at all, Chulk retreated with haste, and every indication of nervous terror, to the safety of the tree from which he had dropped, and, still haunted by that indefinable terror which the close proximity of man awakened in his breast, fled precipitately through the jungle. Aroused by attack, or supported by the presence of another of his kind, Chulk could have braved the ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... liberal retiring allowance when you are worked out. A board every day—except for two months' holiday, varied only by occasional tours of inspection—sounds horrible slavery to a man accustomed to wander at his own free will; and finally, at my time of my life, I have an indefinable dislike to anything involving a total change of life and habits. En revanche, I have a provision for old age and for my family, and shall be almost as glad to be spared the necessity of writing for bread—for butter ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... Meditation." In itself it is not unlike scores of pieces similarly intituled, but it is made significant by its introduction of the theme of Thas in a chastened mood, in the garb of solemn gravity; and the melody of the violin solo, borne up by almost indefinable harmonies, and floated by harp arpeggios, recurs again before the death scene of Thas to delineate her ecstasy and Athanal's despair. Though the intermezzo, thus admirably motived, marks the highest ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... there was an expression of effort, almost of painful effort, so far as the uncertain light permitted me to see, and his sleep seemed to be very profound. He looked, I thought, so stiff, so unnaturally stiff, and in some indefinable way, ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... I could bring forward to increase her confidence in me? I thought there was, and her friendlessness and helplessness touched me to the core of my heart. Yet it was with an indefinable reluctance that ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... of medium size, well knit and vigorous, with a broad forehead, blue eyes, and an intelligent and winning countenance. He might have been suspected of too great amiability and gentleness, but for a firm expression about the mouth, and an indefinable air of manliness, which indicated that it would not do to go too far with him. There was a point, as all his friends knew, where his forbearance gave way and he sternly asserted his rights. He was not so popular in camp as some, because he declined to drink or gamble, and, despite ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... her from childhood, that the deluded man could not discern which of the two spoke the louder. Are not all young men ready to trust the promise of a pretty face and to infer beauty of soul from beauty of feature? An indefinable impulse leads them to believe that moral perfection must co-exist with physical perfection. If Angelique had not been at liberty to give vent to her sentiments, they would soon have dried up in her heart like a plant watered with some deadly ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... and the city's roofs below us, and came to the first of the plantation houses set back amidst the dark foliage. No tremor shook the fringe of moss that hung from the heavy boughs, so still was the day, and an indefinable, milky haze stretched between us and the cloudless sky above. The sun's rays pierced it and gathered fire; the mighty river beside us rolled listless and sullen, flinging back the heat defiantly. And on our left was a tropical forest in all its bewildering luxuriance, the live-oak, the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... it must sound, I was sometimes aware that deep down in him hid some nameless, indefinable quality that proclaimed him fitted to live in conditions that had never known the restraints of modern conventions—a very different thing to doing without them once known. A kind of childlike, transcendental ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... wife, the children would never have been able to guess it from the invariably restrained tones of her fluent and agreeable speech, so different from the outspoken virulence with which people in that house were accustomed to defend their ideas. But, indefinable though it was to Sylvia's undeveloped powers of analysis, she felt that the advent of her father's beautiful and gracious sister was like a drop of transparent but bitter medicine in a glass of clear water. There was no outward sign of change, but everything was tinctured ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... travels is at an end. Once more we are indefinable units in a vast work-a-day world, bound by the iron chains of convention to the customs of civilized men and things. The glorious days in our beloved East are gone, and yet, to us, the Orient seems not far away, for the miles of land and water can be traversed in a thought. Again we stand ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... And at night, when the moon rose in wonderful whiteness and purity, wrapping field and ravine in a riot of silver, the strange, irresistible, unanswerable longing of the great plains stole down upon them, and they knew that here indeed was life in its fulness—a participation in the Infinite, indefinable, ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... in evident alarm, and at the same second Angela thought that she heard a sound of a different character from those she was accustomed to in the old house—a sound like the creaking of a boot. It passed, however, but left an indefinable dread creeping over her, and chilling the blood in her veins. She began to expect something, she knew not what, and was fascinated by the expectation. She would have risen to lock the door, but all strength seemed to have left her; she ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... is certain that if he does not receive them embedded in history or parable, in spoken or enacted symbolism, he will soon fix and record them in some such language for himself. Christ recognized the necessity of speaking to the multitude in parables, not attempting to precise or define the indefinable; but contenting Himself with: "The Kingdom of Heaven is like," &c. "I am content," says Sir Thomas Browne, "to understand a mystery without a rigid definition, in an easie and Platonick description," and it is only through such easie and ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... thing a fine Tourte is! What a revelation the first time a player handles one! When I have an opportunity of playing on a Strad with a Tourte I can never decide which causes me the most delight. There is an indefinable something about a Tourte that seems to increase the player's dexterity of manipulation to an extraordinary extent. No matter how used one may be to a certain bow: no matter how expert one may be in the execution of staccato and arpeggio passages, the ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... is what a name ought to be. As the characteristic quality depends upon a hundred indefinable, subconscious associations, it is clearly impossible to suggest any principle of choice. The only general rule that can be laid down is that the key of the nomenclature, so to speak, may rightly vary with the key of the play—that farcical names are, within limits, admissible ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... these characteristics. Breed to no other, though he were a winner of a thousand first prizes. I prefer a symmetrical dog weighing from sixteen to twenty pounds, rather finer in his make-up than the bitch, and possessing the indefinable quality of style, and evidences in his make-up courage and a fine, open, generous temperament. Do not breed to a dog that is overworked in the stud, kept on a board floor chained up in a kennel or barn, and never given a chance to properly exercise. If you do ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... because of its suggested helplessness and its danger. His heart swelled with an indefinable and bitter rebellion. Everywhere was a scramble for office—everywhere a pouring into the city from the farms and villages. Why was it? Was he not a part of the movement as well as these ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... minutes, watching it, taking it all in, as though he had never seen it before. A policeman on point duty eyed him curiously, yet with no hint of suspicion. Most men, and practically every woman, remembered Jimmy's face when they met him a second time. He was not handsome, far from it; but, in some indefinable way, his grey eyes suggested sympathy, whilst the poise of his head spoke of determination ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... the sellers of sherbet and water-melons sing out their deafening flourish from throats of copper. People form into groups; they meet, question, gesticulate; there are gleaming looks, eloquent gestures, picturesque attitudes; there is a general animation, an unknown charm, an indefinable intoxication. Earth is very near to heaven, and it is easy to understand that, if God were to banish death from this delightful spot, the Neapolitans would desire no ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... running all the way in her anxious haste. The fresh wind and the exertion of running had a beneficial effect upon her, both physically and mentally, for by the time she arrived at Mr. Chartres' door, the feverish flush was replaced by a healthy glow, and the strange, indefinable feeling of restlessness which had all day possessed her, seemed to have been swept away by the ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden
... he met the sister, Maria, then nineteen years old, and fell deeply and seriously in love with her. According to her brother, who wrote a biographical romance on "Chopin's Three Love Affairs," Maria, while not classically a beauty, had an indefinable charm. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... no more. The old-time rake felt his instincts of libertinism aroused by the perfume exhaled by this woman, an indefinable perfume of flesh fresh and virginal, which he thought he inhaled, like a connoisseur, more with the imagination than through sense of smell. At the same time—a strange thing for him!—he experienced a timidity which deprived ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... did not bring Ida. An indefinable sense of apprehension oppressed the minds of all. Martha feared that Ida's mother, finding her so attractive, could not resist the temptation ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the horseman to be Irish, Weary drove in his spurs and galloped forward. Ten leaps perhaps he made, when a rifle shot came sharply ahead. He glanced down and saw horse and rider lying, a blotch of indefinable shape, in the trail. Weary drew his own gun and went on, his teeth set tight together. Now, when it was too late, ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... noticed, as Hadria looked down, a peculiar dreaminess of expression, and something indefinable, which suggested a profoundly emotional nature. At present, the expression was softened. That this softness was not altogether trustworthy, however, the Professor felt sure, for he had seen, at moments, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... the post to John Jay, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The quality, deemed most desirable, which it was feared Jay might lack, was audacity. But he had discretion, tact, and urbanity in full share, besides that indefinable something which went with his ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... he said this, smiling and trying to hold her glance, but she turned her face and looked off obliviously across the room. There were moments when even Frederic Morganstein was conscious of the indefinable barrier beyond which lay intrenched, an untried and repelling force. He straightened and, following her gaze, saw ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... fact that Lady Ancester was well over five-and-forty, and that he himself was four or five years older, and that she had all but hinted that the sight of him would have disillusioned her if the Earl had not—for that was what he read between her lines—she had left something indefinable behind, which he was pleased to condemn as sentimental nonsense. No doubt it was, but it was there, for ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... exhibition of human infirmities, now unconsciously stopped, with an interest in the man that she could not controul, and thus compelled Maria to pause also. The crowd had withdrawn from the man, giving him sufficient room to roll over, in evident pain, while they yet stood gazing at him, with that indefinable feeling of curiosity and nerveless sympathy, which characterises man when not called on to act, by emulation, vanity, or the practice of well-doing. No one offered to assist the sufferer, although many said it ought to be ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... my hands as I read the last words, and a tumultuous rush of feelings made my heart throb with indefinable emotion. In my most sanguine moments I had not perhaps anticipated so favourable an answer, nor hoped that Henry would have exerted himself so earnestly in my behalf; and yet I felt more afraid of him ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... be disputed, nobody can fail to see some truth in Adams's assertion. Hay had not only the manners of a gentleman, but also the special carriage of a diplomat. He was polite, affable, and usually accessible, without ever losing his innate dignity. An indefinable reserve warded off those who would either presume or indulge in undue familiarity His quick wits kept him always on his guard. His main defect was his unwillingness to regard the Senate as having a right to pass judgment on his treaties. And instead of being compliant and compromising, he ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... in which Mrs. Rogers lived. Kennedy inquired for her, and we were admitted to a large reception-room, the very decorations of which showed evidence of her leaning toward the Orient. Mrs. Rogers proved to be a widow of baffling age, good-looking, with a certain indefinable attractiveness. ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... in solemn assent; but Molly, watching with the most acute attention, felt her face blaze at the indefinable shade of mockery she thought to catch ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... cheek resting on the gold and purple kings. The lashes of his closed eyelids cast a shadow on his delicate skin, with its small blue veins, through which life pulsed feebly. He was beautiful as an angel, but with the indefinable corruption of a whole race spread over his countenance. And Aunt Dide looked at him with her vacant stare in which there was neither pleasure nor pain, the stare of eternity contemplating ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... true that we cannot bring to London, with this movement, the indefinable charm that haunts the grey and venerable quadrangles of Oxford and Cambridge. We cannot take you into the stately halls, the silent and venerable libraries, the solemn chapels, the studious old-world gardens. We cannot surround ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... enormous wave of the sea; but we had no idea how large it was till it came near to ourselves. When it approached the outer reef, however, we were awe-struck with its unusual magnitude; and we sprang to our feet, and clambered hastily up to the highest point of the precipice, under an indefinable feeling of fear. ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... intellectual emotion of the situation. It is more than curious to sit in these rooms, in the filthiest spot in London, and listen to Mozskowsky, Tchaikowsky, and Sibelius, played by a factory girl. It is ... something indefinable. I had visited similar places in Stepney before, but then I had not had a couple of vodkas, and I had not been taken in tow by an unknown gang. They play and play, while tea and cigarettes, and sometimes vodka or whisky go round; and as the room ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... his broad forehead was already damp with the sweat of his last agony. Cagliostro surveyed the dying tribune with emotion, for in the very hideousness of his countenance there was a subtle and indefinable fascination. The gigantic stature which had so often awed the tumults of the National Assembly was prostrate. The voice, whose brazen tones had sounded like a trumpet over the land, was hushed—that voice which had exclaimed with such sublime significance to the Marseillais,—"When the last of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... dinner they went back to the dingy studio, where the man lighted a pipe and sat opposite his small daughter, puffing uneasily. They were both reserved; there was an indefinable barrier between them which each was beginning to recognize. Presently Alora asked to go to bed and he sent her to her room ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... appearance, then passed away, trailing a line of faint light over the dusky weeds. The passing firefly served to remind me that I was not smoking, and the thought then occurred to me that a cigar might possibly have the effect of relieving me from the strange, indefinable feeling of depression that had come over me. I put my hand into my pocket and drew out a cigar, and bit the end off; but when about to strike a vesta on my matchbox, I shuddered ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... to a writer who takes the easiest way with it. He curtails his privileges and chooses a narrower method, and immediately the story responds; its better condition is too notable to be forgotten, when once it has caught the attention of a reader. The advantages that it gains are not nameless, indefinable graces, pleasing to a critic but impossible to fix in words; they are solid, we can describe and recount them. And I can only conclude that if the novel is still as full of energy as it seems to be, and is not a form of imaginative art that, having seen the best of its day, is preparing ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... through the show apartments of great houses and palaces, but they were uninhabited, wanted the human touch. It had not occurred to me that men and women could have such wonder as their daily environment, or could invest it with the indefinable charm of intimacy. I turned and looked at Joanna as she sat by the Della Robbia chimney-piece, gracious and distinguished, and Joanna became merged in the Countess de Verneuil, the great lady, as ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... softly, wailing Scotch tunes and mournful Irish songs. He seemed to find in the songs of these people, and especially in a wild, sweet, low-keyed Negro song, some expression for his indefinable inner melancholy. ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... July evening, between the humid after-glow of the sunset and the dawn of the moonlit night, Audrey felt a wholly new and delicate sensation. It was as if she were penetrated for the first time by the indefinable, tender influences of air and moonlight and running water. The mood was vague and momentary—a mere fugitive reflection of the rapture with which Ted, rowing lazily now with the current, drank in the glory ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... reminiscences had lost something of their theatrical formality, and assumed instead the serious gravity, the quaint movement, and marked emphasis which belong to popular music in Northern and Central Italy. An antique character was communicated even to the recitative of Verdi by slight, almost indefinable, changes of rhythm and accent. There was no end to the singing. "Siamo appassionati per il canto," frequently repeated, was proved true by the profusion and variety of songs produced from inexhaustible memories, lightly tried over, brilliantly performed, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... other remarked, "as I said afore, ye're a good plucked un." Then, in a tone in which, despite the cynicism, a certain indefinable sadness was blended, "Gin he mak's you as good husband as he mad' son to me, ye'll ha' made a ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... hoofs, and looked up, so that the faint light fell full upon her face, idealising it, and making its passion-breathing beauty seem more of Heaven than of earth. There was some look upon it, some indefinable light that day—such is the power that Love has to infuse all human things with the tint of his own splendour—that it went even to the heart of the wild and evil man who adored her with the deep and savage force of his dark nature. Was it well to meddle ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... numberless cases which that sanction does not, and, in fact, cannot reach; secondly, the legal sanction, even in those cases which it reaches, is greatly reinforced by the social sanction, which adds the pains arising from an evil reputation, and all the indefinable social inconveniences which an evil reputation brings with it, to the actual penalties ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... hat, coat and furs on one of the beds with the crocheted coverlets. It is a curious thing about rooms. There was no change in the bedroom apparent to the eye, save that for Marie's tiny slippers at the foot of the wardrobe there were Mrs. Boyer's substantial house shoes. But in some indefinable way the room had changed. About it hung an atmosphere of solid respectability, of impeccable purity that soothed Mrs. Boyer's ruffled virtue into peace. Is it any wonder that there is a theory to the effect that things ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... that land, surely, some personal and indefinable spirit of place, which was known and loved by prophet and psalmist, and most of all by Him who spread His table on the green grass, and taught His disciples while they walked the narrow paths waist-deep in rustling wheat, and spoke His messages of love from ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... be accounted for by the lapse of eighteen months. It was that change which comes from the final departure of moral youthfulness—from the distinct self-conscious adoption of a part in life. The lines of the face were as soft as ever, the eyes as pellucid; but something was gone—something as indefinable as the changes in the ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... viewpoint of youth. A fighter and a castle builder; a sort of rough-edged Peter Pan. Till he gums soft food and hobbles with a stick because the years have warped his back and his legs, Casey Ryan will keep that indefinable, bubbling optimism of spiritual youth. So tell me all about him. I want to know who has licked, so far; ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... abruptly, vaguely impressed by the strange solemnity of the night. An equal solemnity seemed to surround the two figures to which he now drew nigh, and as the Princess Ziska turned her eyes upon him as he came, he was, to his own vexation, aware that something indefinable disturbed his usual equanimity and ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... of which the upper part was as a vague and fascinating mystery, but the roots holding it firmly to the ground were tangible, palpable facts. We feared—we knew not what. Love was human, all the other emotions were human; fear alone was indefinable. ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... But it was Maurice Gordon without that semi-sensual weakness of purpose which made him the boon companion of Tom, Dick, or Harry, provided that one of those was only with him long enough. There was a vast depth of reserve—of indefinable possibilities, which puzzled Durnovo, and in some ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... chasm in clear weather, but they will edge miles away from it in a fog. So a Tory can walk up to the very edge of Socialism, if he knows what is Socialism. But if he is told that Socialism is a spirit, a sublime atmosphere, a noble, indefinable tendency, why, then he keeps out of its way; and quite right too. One can meet an assertion with argument; but healthy bigotry is the only way in which one can meet a tendency. I am told that the Japanese method ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... the wonder of a stranger—a Negro stranger, gorgeous of person and attire. He was dressed in a suit of black cloth. A long coat was buttoned close around his tall and robust form. He was dead black, from his shiny top hat to his not less shiny boots, and about him there was the indefinable air of distinction. He stood looking about the platform for a moment, and then stepped briskly and decisively toward the group that was staring at him with wide eyes. There was no hesitation in that step. He walked as ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... if he would give her their names, she would save him the trouble. For, despite his affability, there was something about him she distrusted and disliked,—an indefinable air of insincerity, and a look out of his eyes of ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... they had seriously talked of marriage, though they had been "going together" ever since Caroline knew that a 'boy' was as essential to her grown-up panoply as hairpins, and she felt something indefinable at the back of her mind which was not pleasure; and yet it was not fear—— She turned from her own emotions with a sort of relief. "Goodness! There's the church clock striking a quarter to eleven. We must have been three-quarters of an hour coming from the prom. ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... before him had faded from his sight and instead there appeared a vision of the little hut on the top of Cloudy Mountain. Only a few hours back he had stood on the precipice which looked towards it, and had felt a vague, indefinable something, had heard a voice speak to him out of the vastness which he now believed to have been ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... enough, apparently. Miss Gerald came out of the hotel door towards them, smiling equally for both, with the indefinable difference between cognition and recognition habitual in her look. She was dressed for a walk, and she seemed to expect them to go with her. She beamed gently upon Lanfear; there was no trace of umbrage in her sunny gayety. Her ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... he mocked himself, but there was gladness in the very sight of her, and some indefinable tone in his voice ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... burst of weird music broke on the ears of the wondering spectators. It was a strange and beautiful scene, such as few of them had ever seen. Fairy palaces of fire seemed to hover miraculously in the evening air, and over everything hung the curious, indefinable charm ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie |
