"Undefinable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... christened.' The counsel was taken, and I believe with success." The same belief is found both in North and South Wales. It is also testified to by a Scottish clergyman, who moreover adduces the following conversation as illustrative of it and of "an undefinable sort of awe about unbaptized infants, as well as an idea of uncanniness in having them without baptism in the house," which is entertained among the labouring classes in the north-east of Scotland. "Oh, sir," said the wife of a working ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... front room that he first realized his mundane existence was in danger. He could give no description of what happened beyond the fact that suddenly he was bathed in a cold, revolting air. It hung about him with the undefinable feel and smell of death. A rotten air, he described it, and could think of nothing better; remaining, he thought, for half a minute, filling him with instinctive abject terror, and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... bright as day in the moonlight and Frank watched Willy walking, his shoulders thrown back. He sighed; an undefinable, but haunting melancholy hung about Willy; he often impressed Frank as an old book—a book whose text is trite—which no one will read, and which yet continues to make its mute appeal; a something that has always missed its way, that can hardly ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... the good, the true and the beautiful, is already extant and manifest in the object of his love. Most observers would have held it more than equally accountable that a girl should have like impressions about Rex, for in his handsome face there was nothing corresponding to the undefinable stinging quality—as it were a trace of demon ancestry—which made some beholders hesitate in their ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... them, we convey the meaning that the attribute whiteness belongs to them. The same may be said of the other words above cited. Virtuous, for example, is the name of a class, which includes Socrates, Howard, the Man of Ross, and an undefinable number of other individuals, past, present, and to come. These individuals, collectively and severally, can alone be said with propriety to be denoted by the word: of them alone can it properly be said ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... doubtful, dubious; indecisive; unsettled, undecided, undetermined; in suspense, open to discussion; controvertible; in question &c. (inquiry) 461. vague; indeterminate, indefinite; ambiguous, equivocal; undefined, undefinable; confused &c. (indistinct) 447; mystic, oracular; dazed. perplexing &c. v.; enigmatic, paradoxical, apocryphal, problematical, hypothetical; experimental &c. 463. unpredictable, unforeseeable (unknowable) 519. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the Houses of Parliament, or rather to the House of Commons, and the Ministers taken from the Houses are in fact, though not in name, servants of Parliament. This arrangement leaves an undefined and undefinable amount of authority to the Crown. It is not an arrangement which any man would have planned beforehand; but it is kept up, not because it is an anomaly, but because it has, as a matter of experience, turned out convenient. What even plausible ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... going to my governess, as Lady Knollys said; and so I went. The undefinable sense of danger that smote me whenever I beheld that woman had deepened since last night's occurrence, and was taken out of the region of instinct or prepossession by the strange though slight indications of ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... living over again the events of the past few hours—events which had awakened within him susceptibilities he had not known he possessed, which had struck a new chord in his being whose vibrations thrilled him with strange, undefinable pain. As he recalled Whitcomb's affectionate familiarity, he seemed to hear again the low, musical cadences of the boyish tones, to see the sunny radiance of his smile, to feel the irresistible magnetism of his presence, and it seemed as though something inexpressibly sweet, of ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... which proclaimed it to be fiercer and bolder, formed to wrestle with rough winds, and to laugh at the coming tempests. For the first time since she was, she turned away to tremble, her soul filled with a new and undefinable feeling, for which she could not account. After shading her eyes a moment from the vision, she looked again, and though her trembling increased, and her brain became giddy, she did not wish the being away, nor did she motion it to go. Why should she? There was a smile ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... which seems to be conscience hardly aware of itself as such. It is "the sense of some unexplored evil ever dogging his footsteps," which reached its keenest poignancy in a constitutional horror of serpents, but which is a very subtle and undefinable thing, observable rather as an undertone to his consciousness of life than as anything tangible enough to be defined or accounted for by particular causes. On the journey to Rome, the vague misgivings took shape in one definite experience. ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... came to myself, to an undefinable sense of the tremendous pressure of nothingness. Darkness! it was not that; yet it was as little light. It was as if we lay in a dim, luminous chaos, ourselves an integral part of its self-containment. I did not ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... chords from the organ, melancholy harmonies from some undefinable hymn, actual pleadings from a soul trying to sever its earthly ties. I listened with all my senses at once, barely breathing, immersed like Captain Nemo in this musical trance that was drawing him beyond the ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... it by itself. Even so in the human being there is not any soul which can be isolated and go on living eternally but the analogy of the flame still holds good. Unseizable though a flame may be, and undefinable as substance, it is not unreasonable to trim a fire and make a flame rise above its fuel, free from smoke, clear and pure. If it were a conscious flame, such might be ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... and rats, they owned the human element then, and were far from comfortable, though they would not compromise their good sense by owning what both their younger companions had perceived—their feeling of some undefinable presence. Vain attempts had been made to account for the light or get rid of it by changing the position of candles or bright objects in the outer room; and Henderson had shut himself into the bedroom with it; but there he still only saw the hazy light—though all was ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on this and similar journeys, by means of the Diary, enthuses my soul with an undefinable longing to have been with him. The excitement, and danger, and hurry and bustle constantly incident to travel at the present day were all unfelt ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... chair; whilst La Marmotte, with all the silent notes in her heart touched in some undefinable way, hovered over her, fearing to approach her, and yet feeling as if ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... "will appreciate this delicate shade of meaning. And so, papa Poiret, don't you see it is clear that the government clerk comes to a final end at the head of a division? Now that question once settled, there is no longer any uncertainty; the government clerk who has hitherto seemed undefinable is defined." ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... indescribably, to see the place she was living in, and to follow the movements of her imagined figure as he had watched the real one in the summer-house. The longing was with him day and night, an incessant undefinable craving, like the sudden whim of a sick man for food or drink once tasted and long since forgotten. He could not see beyond the craving, or picture what it might lead to, for he was not conscious of any wish to ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... trembled. But no; Demorest, who had already taken such extreme measures, could not consistently listen to any suggestion for delay. As her only danger lay in Demorest's presence, the absence of her husband caused her more undefinable uneasiness than ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... appeared impossible that anything uncanny should hide beneath that lovely mirror; and yet when some floating wisp of reeds suddenly coiled itself around my neck, or some unknown thing, drifting deeper, coldly touched my foot, it caused that undefinable shudder which every swimmer knows, and which especially comes over one by night. Sometimes a slight sip of brackish water would enter my lips,—for I naturally tried to swim as low as possible,—and then would follow a slight gasping and contest against chocking, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... to-night there was a new sensation of loneliness which I had never felt before, and I longed for some one to be with me; then I began to wonder whom I would prefer for a companion, and thought of all my friends, even to old Madre Moreno, but none of them seemed to be the one to break the new and undefinable loneliness. Suddenly the form of the fair stranger, with her bright eyes and expressive face, came up before my fancy, and I exclaimed, "Yes, it is she; it ...
— The Beautiful Eyes of Ysidria • Charles A. Gunnison
... persons have, I presume, experienced; and which frequently, I think, results from a kind of cumulative evidence of uncongeniality or unworthiness, made up of a number of slight indices of character, which, separately, may appear of little moment, but altogether, produce a strong, if undefinable, feeling of aversion. Mr. Harlowe's manners were bland, polished, and insinuating; his conversation was sparkling and instructive; but a cold sneer seemed to play habitually about his lips, and at times there glanced forth a concentrated, polished ferocity—so to speak—from his eyes, revealing ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... footsteps. They were steeped in gloom, shut in between two black walls, and only a strip of dark sky, spangled with stars, was visible above their heads. And as they stepped along, pacing this path which resembled a dark stream flowing beneath the black star-sprent sky, they were often thrilled with undefinable emotion, and lowered their voices, although there was nobody to hear them. Surrendering themselves as it were to the silent waves of night, over which they seemed to drift, they recounted to one another, with lovers' rapture, the ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... no idea how long he had been asleep, when he started up in bed with an undefinable impression that something was wrong. He sat rubbing his eyes, and but half awake—a confused sound, he knew not what, fell upon his ear; it seemed as if some dreadful strife was going on outside his window, something seemed in a terrible ...
— Leslie Ross: - or, Fond of a Lark • Charles Bruce
... North Dormer accorded to courting couples she had always felt that, on the day when she showed too open a preference, Mr. Royall might, as she phrased it, make her "pay for it." How, she did not know; and her fear was the greater because it was undefinable. If she had been accepting the attentions of one of the village youths she would have been less apprehensive: Mr. Royall could not prevent her marrying when she chose to. But everybody knew that "going with a ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... there was a hint of sagging here and there, in the worn floors, the bedrooms were plainly furnished, almost bare. In the atmosphere there lingered, despite the open windows, the faint undefinable odor common to old houses in which years of frugal and self-denying living have set their mark, an odor vaguely compounded of clean linen and old woodwork, hot soapsuds and ammonia. The children's old books were preserved in old walnut cases, nothing ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris |
