"Unintelligible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was conducted in the native tongue it was unintelligible to Nigel, but after the interview with the chief the hermit explained matters to him, and bade Moses get ready for a start ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... the baby swam like a frog in the clear water of the river, gurgling at intervals scraps of what must have been Marquesan baby-talk, unintelligible to me, but showing plainly her enjoyment. Something of European caution, however, still remained with me and, perhaps unnecessarily, I picked up the dripping little body and carried her up the garden path to the house when I returned for breakfast. Pae received her with ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... engineers were not then agreed that this caused the difficulty; but they did know there was difficulty. Many weird noises played over the lines and as often as not the spoken word was twisted into the strangest gibberish and rendered unintelligible. If the telephone was to satisfy its patrons and prove of real service to the world, the difficulty had to be overcome. Some of the more progressive engineers insisted that a double-wire system without a ground was ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... however, as our hero grew in the good graces of his school-fellows, he fell out of those of his masters, for lessons were brought only half-learned, and exercises only half-written, or blotted and scrawled so as to be nearly unintelligible; and after he had been a fortnight at school, he seemed much more likely to descend to a lower class than to mount a step in his own. Day after day saw Louis kept in the school-room during play-hours, to learn lessons which ought to have been done the night before, or to write out some long imposition ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... looking at each other in wonderment. Then she smiled and held out her hand, palm up, speaking a few words as she did so. Her voice was soft and musical, and the words of a peculiar quality that we generally describe as liquid, for want of a better term. What she said was wholly unintelligible, but whether the words were strange or the intonation different from anything I had ever heard ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... probably written early in the thirteenth century, while the rest all date from the early twentieth century. It might therefore be supposed that the earliest of these stories was written in a language more or less unintelligible to modern Icelanders, and that there was a gap of many centuries in the literary production of the nation. This, however, is ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... Marsh Game Reserve is in northwestern Rhodesia, bordering the Congo Free State. The description of its local boundaries is quite unintelligible ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... istouero, pero, which are often heard among the people. This was the first step. The second step taken arose from the necessity of making this speech of the illiterate capable of elevated expression. Mistral claims to have used no word unknown to the people or unintelligible to them, with the exception that he has used freely of the stock of learned words common to the whole Romance family of languages. These words, too, he transforms more or less, keeping them in harmony with the forms peculiar to the langue d'oc. Hence, it ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... as they were, were content to shiver if only they might not lose sight of her. Their reply was unintelligible; neither would look at the others; yet their mumbled response was understood, and the girl laughed again, loud, ringing, and ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... Kashmiri (official), Sindhi (official), Sanskrit (official), Hindustani a popular variant of Hindu/Urdu, is spoken widely throughout northern India note: 24 languages each spoken by a million or more persons; numerous other languages and dialects, for the most part mutually unintelligible ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... In Vautr. edit. this sentence, reads, "The forward goeth forth, feare ryses, daunger might have bin scene on every side." The later MSS. are equally unintelligible. ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... headquarters in time to share the peril and the glory of one of the most dreadful contests in which we were ever engaged in Europe or in Asia. The inaction of the Sikhs at Ferozepore is, in the present state of our information, unintelligible; but it would be an idle waste of time and space to speculate upon the consequences of a peril which did not assail us, or harrow our minds with the probability of disasters and difficulties ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... legs, with long boots on the feet, all in motion at the same time—all shining, and wriggling, and working with an indescribable vitality, a voice bubbling up from the vast depths below with cheery, spasmodic, and unintelligible words of welcome—this was the wonderful man that stood before me, the great Danish improvisator, the lover of little children, the gentle Caliban who dwells among fairies and holds sweet converse with fishes, and frogs, and beetles! I ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... most suggestive, and certainly not least powerful, of English thinkers, that "a fall of some sort or other,—the creation, as it were, of the non-absolute,—is the fundamental postulate of the moral history of man. Without this hypothesis," he adds, "man is unintelligible,—with it every phenomenon is explicable. The mystery itself is too profound for human insight." Such, in this matter, was the ultimate judgment of a man who in youth had entertained ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... a contribution to the prosaic, concrete work of building, brick by brick, the new walls of old American institutions of education. As a young man I found the writings of Emerson unattractive, and not seldom unintelligible. I was concerned with physical science, and with routine teaching and discipline; and Emerson's thinking seemed to me speculative and visionary. In regard to religious belief, I was brought up in the old-fashioned Unitarian conservatism ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... his sleep when Gwyn reached his side, but for a time his words were unintelligible. Then quite ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... of these savages. But there were other causes contributory to the rebellion. Rinderpest was slaying the cattle of the Matabele by thousands, and the white man's order that, to prevent the scourge from spreading, healthy beasts as well as diseased should be killed was, not unnaturally, quite unintelligible to the Matabele. The rumour spread that the hated white man was killing the cattle in order that the tribes should perish of starvation. The fact, too, that raiding weaker tribes for food was punished by the British further aggravated this "offence." The priests encouraged the spirit ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... the dead language that befitted one cut off from life, to whom Dutch was never aught but the unintelligible jargon of an unspiritual race, he was leaving his house on a bleak evening when one clapped him on the shoulder, and turning in amaze, he was still more mazed to find, for the first time in fifteen years, a fellow-creature tendering a friendly smile and a friendly hand. He drew ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Her speech was rather unintelligible to Rosamond, who could not know of Bruce's compact with Patricia, but she smiled pleasantly ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... peace and good-will to all men, like a personification of Christmas in May, I started out this morning to see my lawyers. I reached them at three o'clock, having idled at second-hand bookstalls and lunched on the road. I signed their unintelligible document, and wandered through the Temple Gardens and along the Embankment. When I had passed under Hungerford Bridge, it struck me that I was warm, a little leg-weary, and the Victoria Embankment Gardens smiled an invitation to repose. I struck the shady path beneath the ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... despatch box, neatly initialed in gold, "I. S. P.," and then a packet of blue-tinted envelopes, held together by two rubber bands, and written on, here and there, in a language which the intruder assumed to be Russian. Next came a japanned-tin box, which proved to hold nothing but a file of quite unintelligible, Seidlitz-powder-colored papers, and then what seemed, to Durkin's exploring fingers, to be a few small morocco cases. The question flashed through his mind: What if, after all, the money he was looking for was not to be found! He struck still another ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... from the following extract from a letter in the Gentleman's Magazine, written with reference to some of the customs there observed:—"I remarked, also, that they frequently used the words to cut, and to sport, in senses to me totally unintelligible. A man had been cut in chapel, cut at afternoon lectures, cut in his tutor's rooms, cut at a concert, cut at a ball, &c. Soon, however, I was told of men, vice versa, who cut a figure, cut chapel, cut gates, cut lectures, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... at that joint resolution, and it certainly ought to be committed to a committee to correct its English. It is unintelligible. ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... Nature towards us is uninfluenced by the justice or injustice of our intentions; and yet these will almost invariably govern our attitude towards Nature. Here once more, as in the case of social justice, we ascribe to the universe, to an unintelligible, eternal, fatal principle, a part that we play ourselves; and when we say that justice, heaven, nature, or events are rising in revolt against us to punish or to avenge, it is in reality man who is using events to punish man, it is human nature that rises ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... probably unintelligible to the untheatrical portion of the community, which may now be said to be all the world except the actors. Ticket-nights are those whereon the inferior actors club for a benefit: each distributes as many tickets of admission ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... who would be hissed to-day in the House of Commons, if he uttered there one single one of the unintelligible absurdities which he gave out with so much confidence before other fanatics who listened to him open-mouthed and wide-eyed, in the name of the Lord. If he said that one must seek the Lord, and fight the Lord's ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... and in England the zeal of the priests in propagating Christianity was so great that they sought to root out every trace of the asa-faith. They left but unintelligible fragments of the heathen religious structure. Our gods and goddesses and heroes were consigned to oblivion, and all knowledge of the Odinic religion and of the Niblung-story would have been well nigh totally obliterated ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... young, very intense Jewish girl, known to her associates as Clara Lemlich, sprang to her feet, and, with the assistance of two young men, climbed to the high platform. Flinging up her arms with a dramatic gesture she poured out a flood of speech, entirely unintelligible to the presiding Gompers, and to the members of the Women's Trade Union League. The Yiddish-speaking majority in the audience understood, however, and the others quickly caught the spirit of ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... something unintelligible, and Cumshaw, who was all for haste now that their work was finished, did not ask ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... gave a little quavering laugh, and picked up the rifle. It was a heavy lo-bore Holland, a Holland with a single barrel, and that barrel was twisted like a corkscrew. The lock had been wrenched off, and there were marks upon the stock—marks of teeth, and other queer, unintelligible marks as well. ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... sought to amuse, the second had a political object, the third a religious object.(131) We gather this simply from the opinions we had previously formed of the authors. (132) Thus it is evidently necessary to know something of the authors of writings which are obscure or unintelligible, if we would interpret their meaning; and for the same reason, in order to choose the proper reading from among a great variety, we ought to have information as to the versions in which the differences are found, and as ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... ideas are few. He learns even these few with difficulty, and employs the same to express many different things; he generally articulates them indistinctly, often indeed so imperfectly as to be almost unintelligible. ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... memory alone, she misdates, mistakes, misplaces; jumbles all things topsy-turvy;—giving, on the whole, an image of affairs which is altogether oblique, dislocated, exaggerative; and which, in fine, proves unintelligible, if you try to construe it into a fact or thing DONE. Yet her Human Narrative, in that wide waste of merely Pedant Maunderings, is of great worth to us. A green tree, a leafy grove, better or worse, in the wilderness of dead bones and sand,—how welcome! Many other Books have ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... nearly two months, I could not forbear a feeling of repulsion on reading the letter of Citizen Rossel. It is a capitally written letter, firm, concise, conclusive, differing entirely from the bombastic, unintelligible documents to which the Commune has accustomed us; and besides, it brings to light several details at which I rejoice, because it permits me to hope that the reign of our tyrants is nearly at an end. I am glad to hear that the Commune, ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... And from plain figures are derived solid bodies, and from these sensible bodies, of which there are four elements, fire, water, earth, and air. The world results from a combination of these elements." [Footnote: Diog. Laert., Lives of Phil.] All this is unintelligible or indefinite. We cannot comprehend how the number theory will account for the production of corporeal magnitude any easier than we can identify monads with mathematical points. But underlying this mysticism is the thought that ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... thought on awakening was for his chum. Charley was tossing restlessly on his blanket, his face and hands flushed and hot with fever. All of Walter's attempts to rouse him met only with unintelligible words and phrases. The exertion of the previous day in his weak state, the opening of his wound afresh, and the unhealthy river water he had drank, had all combined to bring him to a ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... we for a moment adopt the Christian point of view for the sake of argument, the whole raison d'etre of mankind is bound up in Him. Lastly, there are considerations per contra, rendering an incarnation antecedently probable[75]. On antecedent grounds there must be mysteries unintelligible to reason as to the nature of God, &c., supposing a revelation to be made at all. Therefore their occurrence in Christianity is no proper objection to Christianity. Why, again, stumble a priori over the doctrine of the Trinity—especially as man himself is a triune being, of body, mind ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... his progress to the tea-table, Mr. Tiffany adopted a tottering and uncertain step, indicating a dilapidated old age, only kept together by the clothes he wore, which was altogether unintelligible to the Peabody family, seeing that Mr. Carrack was in the very prime of youth, till Mrs. Carrack remarked, with an affectionate smile of ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... white-smocked fat man with anachronistic spectacles and close-cropped gray hair came into the room, moving with the professional assurance of a medic. The man stopped short at Farrell's stare and spoke; his words were utterly unintelligible, but his ...
— Control Group • Roger Dee
... in Italy. Gongora is merely the Spanish representative of the movement, which also produced Euphuism in England and preciosite in France. But he surpassed all previous writers in the extreme to which he carried the method, and his Soledades and Polifemo are simply unintelligible for the inversions and strained metaphors with which ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... tall figure pacing up and down the sand, beating his breast and groaning with despair, perhaps; but instead, the sands were deserted. Noll came opposite the miserable dwelling, and paused a few seconds before rapping, waiting to hear the sick child's low wail. He heard only a confused, unintelligible murmur of voices. ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... human, fleshly eye, nor from any one of the five so-called physical senses! The physical sense-testimony which mankind believe they receive from the eyes, the ears, and the other sense organs, can, even at best, consist only of a lot of disconnected, unintelligible vibrations; and anything that the mind may infer from such vibrations is inferred ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... studied it in the writings of Oliver Goldsmith, John Ruskin, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In America it seemed to be used chiefly by auctioneers, art critics, and immigrants. The other was a dialect, evidently English in origin, but sufficiently removed from the parent stock to be quite unintelligible. The professor spent many painful hours over such sentences as "Jeffries annexes the Brunette Beauty's Angora," and "Sugar Barons hand Uncle Sam a lemon." This dialect, he found, was extensively employed by truck-drivers, ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... then she understood. The galloping horse was pulled in with almost the same suddenness that had amazed her when she had first seen the Arabs. She felt him draw her close into his arms and slip down on to the ground; there were voices around her—confused, unintelligible; then they died away as she felt him carry her a few paces. He set her down and unwound the covering from her face. The light that shone around her seemed by contrast dazzling with the darkness that had gone before. Confused, ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... one must make some translation, I have done my best with this passage, which is, however, utterly unintelligible in Dindorf's text. A reference to his selection of notes will furnish some new readings, but, as a whole, ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... thought something, I understood, but the thoughts themselves were hopelessly unintelligible to me. You know the explanation?" asked ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... in every well-regulated household and school. A German girl would consider the idea of going to a party at such times as simply preposterous; and the difference that exists in this respect in America is wholly unintelligible ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... wares, the poorest Japanese is able to enjoy that special peculiarity and synthesis of line and colour and perspective which strikes even initiated Westerns as so exotic, far-fetched and almost wilfully unintelligible. ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... seemed to freeze the words on her lips, and soon an unintelligible murmur was the only answer to ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... the bottom, and the pure stream flows along over it."—Philological Museum, i, 645. "This use is bounded by the province, county, or district, which gives name to the dialect, and beyond which its peculiarities are sometimes unintelligible, and always ridiculous."—Campbell's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... way by these unintelligible sailing-orders; but just at that moment, as luck would have it, another cyclist flew past—the first soul I had seen on the road that morning. He was a man with the loose-knit air of a shop assistant, badly got up in a rather loud and obtrusive tourist suit of brown homespun, with ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... inhabitants arose from their slumbers, and sallied forth into the streets to inquire the cause of the disturbance, they soon discovered that they had, in some mysterious manner, been entrapped. Wild Irishmen, with uncouth garb, threatening gesture, and unintelligible jargon, stood gibbering at every corner, instead of the comfortable Flemish faces of the familiar burgher-guard. The chief burgomaster, sleeping heavily after Sir William's hospitable banquet, aroused himself at last, and sent a militia-captain to inquire the cause ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... went up to the holy table. In a voice full of feeling he tried to express his gratitude and happiness to all those brave fellows. I should not imagine him to be a brilliant speaker at the best of times, but on that occasion the worthy man was completely unintelligible. His happiness was choking him. He tried in vain to find the words he wanted, used the wrong ones, and only confused himself by trying to get them right. But nobody had the least desire to laugh when, to conclude his address, he said with a sigh ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... and kept flapping in the other's face, who, having more than enough to do in preserving his own equilibrium, could not think of attempting at any time to control the pace of his steed, and had no relief but fuming and pesting at the sacre manteau, in language happily unintelligible to its wearer. Now and then some ditch or turf-fence rendered it indispensable to adventure on a leap, and no farce could have been more amusing than the display of politeness which then occurred between ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... service!" answered Heideck, and, as the boat lay to, he threw off his cloak, so as to spring on deck more easily. Three men, in the dark, woollen smock and tarpaulined hat of coast fishermen, approached him and, in answer to his inquiry for the master, told him, in an unintelligible mixture of Dutch and German, that ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... river at Blenheim—to naked fields and the planted trees on the hills. We were disgusted with the stables, outhouses, or farm-houses in different parts of the grounds behind the Castle: they were broad, out-spreading, fantastic, and unintelligible buildings. ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... descriptions of the chorus or of the actors took their place. The dialogue and choruses are given in a nasal recitative, accompanied by the mouth-organ, flute, drum, and other classical instruments, and are utterly unintelligible. The ancient poetry is full of puns and plays upon words, and it was with no little difficulty that, with the assistance of a man of letters, I prepared beforehand the arguments of the ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... the past. All these, Chesterton makes it clear, are matters in which the strength of Thackeray lies. Not that they are free always from exaggerations. Sometimes Thackeray became lost in his irrelevancy, sometimes he became almost unintelligible in his rambling style, now and then his use of ancient quotation became irritating. 'Above all things, Thackeray was receptive. The world imposed on Thackeray, and Dickens imposed on the world.' But it could not be put more truly than that ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... long as they lived she would have him. Mamma and Mark were happy together; their happiness tingled, you could feel it tingling, like the happiness of lovers. They didn't want anybody but each other. You existed for them as an object in some unintelligible time and in a space outside their space. The only difference was that Mark knew you ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... narrow-headed and hard-hearted pedant, quite unaware that he is living an inner life of doubts, struggles, prayers, self-reproaches, noble hunger after an ideal of moral excellence, such as you, friend Tom, never yet dreamed of, which would be to you as an unintelligible gibber of shadows out of dreamland, but which is to him the only reality, the life of life, for which everything is to be risked and suffered? You treat his opinions (though he never thrusts them on you) about "the Church," and his duty, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... than she did that Leubronn had been the goal of her admirer's journeying, and feeling that it would be unkind uselessly to revive the memory of a brilliant prospect under the present reverses. In his secret soul he thought of his niece's unintelligible caprice with regret, but he vindicated her to himself by considering that Grandcourt had been the first to behave oddly, in suddenly walking away when there had the best opportunity for crowning his marked ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... phenomena in very remote eras, resembles, in a singular manner, that which has accompanied the growing intelligence of every people, in regard to the economy of nature in their own times. In an early state of advancement, when a greater number of natural appearances are unintelligible, an eclipse, an earthquake, a flood, or the approach of a comet, with many other occurrences afterwards found to belong to the regular course of events, are regarded as prodigies. The same delusion prevails as to moral phenomena, and many of these are ascribed ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... saw all the Huns dancing, cutting their faces with knives, and shouting unintelligible words. Edeko came up and pulled Orestes away through the crowds. "Attila is dead! May Jesus Christ ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... by indomitable will had shaken off his own shackles and was making slavery odius by his matchless and eloquent arraignment; the other, "a leader of men," had now written his protest with the blood of his captors. Cinguez, with unintelligible utterance in African dialect with emphatic gesture, his liberty loving soul on fire, while burning words strove for expression, described his action on the memorable night of his emancipation, with such vividness, power, and pathos that the audience seemed ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... the portrait of some handsome warrior, whose features will so incomprehensibly strike you, that you will not be able to withdraw your eyes from it. Dorothy, meanwhile, no less struck by your appearance, gazes on you in great agitation, and drops a few unintelligible hints. To raise your spirits, moreover, she gives you reason to suppose that the part of the abbey you inhabit is undoubtedly haunted, and informs you that you will not have a single domestic within call. With this parting cordial she curtsies ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... his dressing-room. His business was to call loudly, when the latter entered, "His honor the Court, hats off. Everybody please rise," while a second bailiff, standing at the left of his honor when he was seated, and between the jury-box and the witness-chair, recited in an absolutely unintelligible way that beautiful and dignified statement of collective society's obligation to the constituent units, which begins, "Hear ye! hear ye! hear ye!" and ends, "All those of you having just cause for complaint draw near and ye shall be ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... freedom of the horizon. Her favorite place had been at the edge of the grass above the tide; but, since his return, Edward Dunsack had hit upon it too, and his proximity made her increasingly uneasy. For one thing he talked to himself out loud, principally in Chinese, and the sliding unintelligible tongue, accompanied by the sight of his gaunt yellow face, his inattentive fixed eyes, gave her an icy shiver. It was almost worse when he conversed with her in a palpable effort at an effect ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... departed on his errand, when a loud commotion was heard in the passage. Mr. Dan Duff had burst in at the back door, uttering sounds of distress—of fright—his eyes starting, his hair standing on end, his words nearly unintelligible. ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... prospects around me, still struck with new sense of pleasure; when I found by the voice of my friend, who walked by me, that we had insensibly strolled into the grove sacred to the widow. "This woman," says he, "is of all others the most unintelligible; she either designs to marry, or she does not. What is the most perplexing of all, is, that she doth not either say to her lovers she has any resolution against that condition of life in general, or that she banishes them; but, conscious of her own merit, ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... then the speaker would be interrupted by his excitable listeners with some exclamation of wonder, horror, incredulity, derision, pity, or the like—which, being in Anglo-Congo or ebony lingo, must needs be unintelligible to many of my readers. Therefore, for the enlightenment and edification of the unlearned, have I thought it best to give a list of the interjections and phrases in question, with the definition or free translation of ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... all very unintelligible. But he understood that Mrs. Fuller was in trouble of some kind and that it was his duty to help her if possible, although he had an odd and unaccountable aversion to the woman, for which ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the "Morning's News." This news is made up of small short extracts from, or more correctly speaking, small paragraphs about—extracts from—the foreign newspapers. If I have not heard any rumours at my cafe, these paragraphs are commonly unintelligible; if I have heard any such reports of agitation or excitement abroad in reference to the Papacy I always find from the paragraphs, that these reports were utterly erroneous. There is a good deal about the new French free-trade tariff, ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... As to the "unintelligible authorised version," I must premise that no version has yet had so large an amount of learning bestowed on it as the English one; indeed it has fairly beaten out of the field all the versions of all other sections of Christians. The difficulty of the English ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... been a nothing; a purpose, which had lately been a fancy; a finished temple, with the altar-fires lit and the voice of worship ascending, where before had been but an architect's confusion of arid working plans, unintelligible to the passing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... herself. "Cabin." An incoherent flood of dream-stuff welled up and up till her head was dizzy and her heart seemed bursting. Shadows, and looming bulks of things, and unintelligible associations fluttered and whirled about, and she strove vainly with her consciousness to grasp and hold them. For she felt that there, in that welter of memories, was the key of the mystery; could she but grasp and hold it, all would be clear ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... somewhat sensual, and not a little unintelligible,—this is a dreamy volume, without an object, ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Una Spiritto, which is to say, un Spiritalo, Immortallo, Incorporallo, Inanimate, Immaterialle, Philosophicale, Invisible—Unintelligible—Diavillo. [In the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... the father of Alfred Winston will best explain his own present position in the world. That father was one of a class of men altogether inexplicable, quite unintelligible to sober-minded and methodical persons; and yet the class is not so very rare. He was of good birth and fortune, of agreeable manners, and witty conversation, but utterly destitute of all prudential, all providential care, whether for himself or others. He was born to an ample estate; and, fond ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... away from my origins under a storm of blame from every quarter which had the merest shadow of right to voice an opinion, removed by great distances from such natural affections as were still left to me, and even estranged, in a measure, from them by the totally unintelligible character of the life which had seduced me so mysteriously from my allegiance, I may safely say that through the blind force of circumstances the sea was to be all my world and the merchant service my only home for a long ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... and Capito, hastened to come to an understanding with Wittenberg, without which their position would have been extremely perilous. Bucer claimed to represent a middle doctrine, such as was later asserted by Calvin. As no middle ground is possible, the doctrine is unintelligible, being, in fact, nothing but the statement, in strong terms, of two mutually exclusive propositions. After much humiliation the divines succeeded, however, in satisfying Luther, with whom they signed the Wittenberg Concord on May 29, 1536. The Swiss still remained without ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... sought Carroll's face. Both men knew that something vitally unexpected was about to be disclosed. They waited for the girl to speak—and when she did her voice was so low as to be almost unintelligible. ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... Bulba," because no comedy can ever be as great a thing of beauty as an epic poem. What rouses laughter cannot rank as high as what rouses tender emotion. Moreover, with the passing away of the generation familiar with the corruption it satirizes, the comedy often becomes unintelligible save to scholars. Hence the utter valuelessness to us of to-day of the comedies of Aristophanes as works of wit. Their only value to-day is as fragmentary records of Greek manners. The comedy is thus writ not for all times, but only for a time; while "Taras ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... and dirty into the bargain. I therefore gave up that idea, and amused myself in the best way I could. I helped Mademoiselle Madeleine in her poultry-yard and dairy, looked in on the old lady employed in her culinary affairs, walked over the farm with the old man, and chatted in my somewhat unintelligible French, with every one I met. Happening to go into my own room in the evening, I found the window open, and looking out, I saw that the height from the sill to the ground was not more than ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... a voice, that even Mrs Sims, much as she might have wished to do so, could not catch a word—while the honest lieutenant, who did not trouble himself about the matter, endeavoured to make amends for the somewhat unintelligible replies which his wife ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... woman that caused his first debasement; let him not, therefore, glory in his shame; let him not worship the fountain of his corruption." Learning and accomplishments were alike discouraged; and women confined to a knowledge of cooking, family medicines, and the unintelligible theological discussions of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... dropped her chicken bone, Caroline's knife and fork clattered on her plate. The movement propagated itself, grew more decisive; Emmeline sprang to her feet, uttering a cry. The wave of panic reached George; he turned and, mumbling something unintelligible as he went, rushed out of the room and down the winding stairs. He came to a standstill in the hall, and there, all by himself in the quiet house, he began ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... to wind the clock—of which he perceived that the only visible specimen had stopped. He knew that the southern races communicated with each other in the language of pantomime, and was mortified to find her shrugs and smiles so unintelligible. At length she returned with a lamp; and Archer, having meanwhile put together a phrase out of Dante and Petrarch, evoked the answer: "La signora e fuori; ma verra subito"; which he took to mean: ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... artfully put back, and bonnet on side: "vaistie wanis" is now unintelligible; some interpret the phrase as meaning "wasteful wants", but this seems improbable, considering the locality ...
— English Satires • Various
... The answer was unintelligible, but, as it was accompanied by an impatient wave of the hand and a turning of the speaker's back upon him, Mildmay rightly concluded that the individual was one of those obstinate, pig-headed people, who, having once made a mistake, will persist in it at all hazards rather ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... bo'sun of the Falcon, sir, and one steerage passenger. Destroyed by fire five days ago; and we've been in this here cockle-shell ever since." But his voice was so husky and dry that he was almost unintelligible. "Mates, for the love of Heaven, give us summat to drink," cried the other man, as he was lifted into the boat. And in a few minutes they were speeding back to the steamer, and the sailors were trying to pour a few ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... now give a few specimens of the almost unintelligible answers dragged from her, as it were, after much ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... crept silently into use, and then claimed the rank of divine institutions. Officers, for whom the primitive disciples could have found no place, and titles, which to them would have been altogether unintelligible, began to challenge attention, and to be named apostolic. It is the duty of the historian to endeavour to point out the origin, and to trace the progress of these innovations. A satisfactory account of them must go far to settle more than one ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Himself at length within the leafy nooks Where the wild branch of the cork forest grew; There poets find materials for their books, And every now and then we read them through, So that their plan and prosody are eligible, Unless, like Wordsworth, they prove unintelligible. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... counted on. So certain did this seem that the prospect of a prompt reunion mitigated the distress with which Leila learned of her mother's decision to return almost immediately to Italy. No one understood this decision; it seemed to Leila absolutely unintelligible that Mrs. Lidcote should not stay on with them till their own fate was fixed, and Wilbour echoed ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... that her patient had recovered consciousness, broke forth in a torrent of unintelligible Theronian, then ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... theoretical discussions of human problems, but in the individuals who face the problems. In this point Browning is sharply distinguished from his poetic contemporaries as a class. They felt deeply "all the weary weight of this unintelligible world," so deeply that while they gave much thought to ideals of social amelioration, few of them presented individuals with any dramatic distinctness. Browning stands practically by himself in the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... should be dumb not to have inquired the road I was to journey; and if dumb there would be an end to my calling." After simpering in a small way, like one whose modesty prohibited a more open expression of his admiration of a witticism that was perfectly unintelligible to his hearers, he continued, "It is not prudent for any one of my profession to be too familiar with those he has to instruct; for which reason I follow not the line of the army; besides which, I conclude that a gentleman ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... guilty)—Ver. 5. Chambry, one of the French Editors, omits this, as unworthy of Phaedrus, and Adry pronounces it unintelligible. The meaning of this, which is Jannelli's version, seems to be: "When you ought not to please yourself, you do please yourself, in committing the crime; but the consequence is that, afterwards, when you ought to feel pleased, in that you have gratified your desires, you cannot, in consequence of ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... strange and unintelligible in this part of the country that we were obliged to leave Halifax at eight this morning, and breakfast on the road—at Huddersfield again, where we had an hour's wait. Wills was in attendance on the platform, and took me (here at ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... absent from that which was intended to support a hostile view; and the only injustice of which he ever complained, was what he spoke of as falsely condemning him out of his own mouth. He used to say: 'If a critic declares that any poem of mine is unintelligible, the reader may go to it and judge for himself; but, if it is made to appear unintelligible by a passage extracted from it and distorted by misprints, I have no redress.' He also failed to realize those conditions of thought, and still more of expression, which made him often ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... remained noble, restrained, sympathetic, manifesting itself not in appeals for condolence, but in pitying care for all who were near and dear to him. Yet his lofty prose and poetry, interpenetrated with the stern despair of pessimistic idealism, will always be unintelligible to the many. As a poet, De Vigny appeals to the chosen few alone. In his dramas his genius is more emancipated from himself, in his novels most of all. It is by these that he is most widely known, and by these that he exercised the greatest ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Person, and gave for an Instance, my getting into my Bed as decently as a Cacklogallinian; and that of my Species certainly had a Language among 'em, for he had heard me very distinctly utter some unintelligible Words, and even repeat ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... generally painted with a mixture of grease and coal. Over the shoulders is a loose robe or mantle of buffalo skin dressed white, adorned with porcupine quills, loosely fixed, so as to make a jingling noise when in motion, and painted with various uncouth figures, unintelligible to us, but to them emblematic of military exploits or any other incident: the hair of the robe is worn next the skin in fair weather, but when it rains the hair is put outside, and the robe is either thrown over the arm or wrapped round the body, all of which ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... out of her head; in and out, hammers going in ship-builders' yards, saws going at timber, clashing engines going at things unknown, pumps going in leaky ships, capstans going, ships going out to sea, and unintelligible sea-creatures roaring curses over the bulwarks at respondent lightermen, in and out,—out at last upon the clearer river, where the ships' boys might take their fenders in, no longer fishing in troubled waters with them ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... his faded eyes, and fixed them upon his nephew's face. He tried to speak, but his voice was thick and his words were unintelligible. ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... it before? Why hadn't they tried to hail it when they did see? To have had such a chance and lost it! Once they were frightened almost uncontrollably by a group approaching with strange sounds—Italian laborers, cheerful and unintelligible when Dosia intrepidly questioned them. They passed on, still jabbering; two bedraggled women and a baby were no novelty to them. Then there was more long, high fencing, and moonlight, and silence, and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... which has gathered round it, should be at bottom and in all cardinal respects so faithful a transcript of "the truth as it is in Nature" came as a surprise and to me at least as a rebuke. How, under the rigid necessity of incorporating in its system much that seemed nearly unintelligible, and much that was barely credible, Theology has succeeded so perfectly in adhering through good report and ill to what in the main are truly the lines of Nature, awakens a new admiration for those who constructed and kept this faith. ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... carefully reprinted under the direction of competent scholars from the best editions. In a series intended for popular use not less than for students, adherence to the old spelling would in many cases leave the matter unintelligible to ordinary readers, and, as the appeal of a classic is universal, the spelling has in general ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... raised its eyebrows, bared its rabbit teeth and, wildly waving its arms, poured a stream of unintelligible jargon ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... turned towards the Cross, reading the name, and they made a sign with the hands in unison, a rapid crisscross motion over the breast, the forehead, the eyes, ending in the low murmur of a word, unintelligible, like a pledge. Then the first mask to the left rose and bowed to ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... rapidly grew upon him, and he eagerly drank up one or two small portions of wine, with which I supplied him. His fate was now evidently brought one degree nearer to him. He kept his gaze intently and unceasingly turned to the window of the dungeon. His muttered replies were incoherent or unintelligible, and his sunk and weakened eye strained painfully on the grated window, as if he momentarily expected to see the first streak of the dawn of that morning, which to him was to be night. His nervous agitation gradually ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... received by the Church, from which fragments have been lost; while others consider it a mere fragment itself. It is written in Latin, which by some is represented as most corrupt, whilst others uphold it as most correct. The text is further rendered almost unintelligible by every possible inaccuracy of orthography and grammar, which is ascribed diversely to the transcriber, to the translator, and to both. Indeed, such is the elastic condition of the text, resulting ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... Valcarm and of his papers is at the present moment not of so much moment to us as is that of Linda Tressel. Valcarm was carried off, with or without the papers, and she, after some hurried words, which were unintelligible to her in her dismay, found herself upon the platform amidst the porters. A message had come from Nuremberg by the wires to Augsburg, requiring the arrest of Ludovic Valcarm, but the wires had said nothing of any companion that might be with him. ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... the absurd question as to how many angels could dance together on the point of a needle. The play of words became interminable. Things were lost sight of in a barbarous jargon about questions which have no interest to humanity, and which are utterly unintelligible. At the best, logical processes can add nothing to the ideas from which they start. When these ideas are lofty, discussion upon them elevates the mind and doubtless strengthens its powers. But when the subjects themselves are frivolous, the logical tournaments in their ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... doings, and sufferings of the church of Christ. And all these have of necessity, the closest relation to Christian principle. They are the production of its power. Through them, it is revealed and manifested. In its light, they are to be studied, explained, and understood. Without it they must be as unintelligible and insignificant as the letters of a book, scattered ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... gave it a slight jab with his sword. In a moment a white blanket was thrown off, and there lay, as nicely coiled up as little pigs, two of the Yankee sentinels. They threw up their hands in a dazed kind of way, and to our whispered threats and uplifted swords, uttered some unintelligible jargon. We soon saw they did not understand a word of English. So it was we captured almost their entire picket line, composed of foreigners of Banks' Army, of Louisiana. Just then, on our right, whether from friend or foe, I never learned, several ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... that he was indeed astonished. It can seldom be the case that a man shall receive a letter by which he is so absolutely lifted out of his own world of ordinary contentment into another absolutely different. And the world into which he was lifted was one black with unintelligible storms and clouds. It was as though everything were suddenly changed for him. The change was of a nature which altogether unmanned him. Had he been ruined that would have been as nothing in comparison. The death of no friend,—so he told himself in the first ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... paintings in the world more difficult to reproduce satisfactorily in black and white than those of Rembrandt. His marvelous effects of chiaroscuro leave in darkness portions of the composition, which appear in the photograph as unintelligible blurs. With these difficulties to meet, great pains have been taken to select for the reproductions of this book the best photographs made direct from the original paintings. A comparative study of the available material has resulted in making use ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... and millipedian crawlers; wood lice and the domestic shirt ones, which, like the poor, we have always with us; spiders of all sizes, including tarantulas; and, in addition, lizards and rats, while on the kopje, baboons walk about chattering all sorts of unintelligible witticisms ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... prying disposition, given to weighing every word and marking every gesture of a delirious patient, what might we not fear from her circumspection when Carmel's memory asserted itself and she grew more precise in the frenzy which now exhausted itself in unintelligible cries, or the ceaseless repetition of her sister's name. The question seemed of such importance to me that I was tempted to give expression to my secret apprehension on this score, but I bethought myself in time and passed the matter over with the ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... Ripton ejaculated unintelligible stuff. Finally Lord Mountfalcon said: "I went out of my way, sir, in speaking to you. I saw you from the window. Your friend is mad. Deuced methodical, I admit, but mad. I have particular reasons to wish ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... moving her head back and forth on the pillow and gazing about with bright, unseeing eyes. As night came on, she began to give, in a voice not her own, little piteous cries of suffering, or strange delirious mockeries of her pretty laughter and quaint, unintelligible, prattling talk. Once, as the long, hot night stood still, the baby called out, quite clearly: "Mamma! Mamma!" It was the first time she had ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... heard a footstep near me, and, looking up, lo! there was my friend with the foot, standing within a yard of me, his hand stretched out for alms! I was so frightened, that for a moment I thought of giving him my watch, to get rid of him. However, I glided past him with a few unintelligible words, and rushed to call the servants; sending him some money by the first person who came. The porter, who had not seen him pass, is now dispersing the crowd. What vociferous exclamations! A—— has come in and drawn the curtains, and I think they ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... if it be—if the whole confluent ocean of its experiences be—unintelligible and without meaning; it remains that mortal men must endure it, and comfort themselves with their "little pleasures." The immoral cruelty of Fate has been well expressed by Matthew Arnold in that poem called "Mycerinus," where the virtuous king does not receive his ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... Europe would be played by each in the same key, the same measure, and the same air, so would the Chinese characters be equally understood by the natives of Japan, Tunquin, and Cochin-China; yet each would give them different names or sounds, that would be wholly unintelligible to one another. When, on the present voyage, we stopped at Pulo Condore, the inhabitants, being Cochin-Chinese, had no difficulty in corresponding, by writing, with our Chinese interpreters, though they could not ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... and made immediately and exquisitely responsive to the emotional exaltation of music and song. Nor are these vague terms. Psychology of song and psychological action in general may seem indefinite and unintelligible. They become, however, absolutely definite and intelligible when the part played by the nerves as intermediaries between mind and muscular action of a subtle and highly refined order is appreciated. The mind presses the button, the nerves carry the messages, and ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... difficulty was to get them to remove their property. However, we are rid of them now. The only relic of their occupation is a Bible with half the pages torn out, and the rest scrawled with records of bets, recipes for sudorific and other medicines, and a mass of unintelligible memoranda. One inscription, in faded ink, runs, 'To Robert Mellish, from his affectionate mother, with her sincere hope that he may ever walk in the ways of this book.' I am afraid that ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... economist, Jonathan, nor a statistician. Most books on political economy, and most books filled with statistics, seem to you quite unintelligible. Your education never included the study of such books and they are, therefore, almost if ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... clever. You see how the 'Thousand and One Nights' are quite true and real; how great Beys sit with grocers, and carpenters have no hesitation in offering civility to naas omra (noble people). This is what makes Arab society quite unintelligible and ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... the rudeness and ignorance in which they were still involved, and even to maintain that hearty sympathy with them and that kindly interest in their temporal welfare which its best men in its earlier days had shown. It continued to have its services in a language which had for ages been unintelligible to the bulk of the laity, and was but partially intelligible to not a few of its ordinary priests. It had no catechisms or hymn books bringing down to the capacities of the unlettered the truths of religion, and freely circulated among them.[4] It did not, when the invention of printing ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... down," cried the Steel King. "Here, Jack,"—this to the aged garcon, "smoke up! and ask the ladies what they'll have"—all of which was unintelligible to the two little Parisiennes and the garcon, but quite clear in ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... protected those worthy deserving Men, with singular Tenderness and Attention; and was instructed and guided solely by Dr. Moore, in the restoring, establishing, and modelling the University of Paris, at that gloomy Period! quite buried in perplexed, unintelligible, peripatetic Philosophy, and disfigured with romantic Legends, and Gothic Jingle! But, at the Doctor's Appearance, Entities, Quiddities, Sympathies, Antipathies, occult Qualities, substantial Forms, metaphysical Degrees, Categories, ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... instead of explaining away Original Sin, are unintelligible, nay, absurd and immoral, except as shadows, types, and symbols of it, and of the Redemption from it. Observe, too, that Taylor never dares explain what he means by "Adam was mortal of himself and we are mortal from him:" he did not dare affirm that soul and body ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... at once to give a proof of his art, praising Spring in a song thrilling with melody. Beckmesser interrupts him; he has marked the rhymes on the black tablet, but they are new and unintelligible to this dry verse-maker, and he will not let them pass. The others share his opinion; only Hans Sachs differs from them, remarking that Walter's song, though new and not after the old use and wont ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... unintelligible as those of a dumb show that could not by the beholder be interpreted; gestures incorrespondent to ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... matter of form—for my Spanish is by no means unintelligible—I am examined through the medium of an interpreter, who makes a terrible hash of my replies. He talks of the 'foots of my friend's negro,' and the 'commandant's, officers', sergeant's relations,' by which I infer that the learned linguist has never overcome the fifth lesson of his Ollendorff. ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... the drinking preceded his speech, and his tongue already had a loop in it The liquor stole through him, a mist of bewildering and enchanting influence. The third cup broke his sentences into unintelligible fragments; the fourth made his underjaw sag loosely, the fifth and sixth, taken in close succession, tumbled him limp on the floor, where he slept blissfully all night long, snugly covered with some of Father Beret's ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... millions of years hence, and he will have been torn limb from limb. The combination of stars that forms that striking constellation and all other constellations is temporary as the grouping of the clouds. The rise of man from the lower orders implies a scale of time almost as great. It is unintelligible to us because it belongs to a category of facts that transcends our experience and the experience of the race as the interstellar spaces ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... not surprised to hear you say so. Any sympathy for the husband is unusual, no doubt, yet I am not prepared to admit that it is unintelligible. You ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... see Chapter I. The Egyptians, like other nations, often apply their own names, which have a meaning, to the older terms which have become unintelligible. Thus, near Cairo, the old goddess, Athor el-Nb ("of the Gold"), became Asr el-Nabi ("the Footprint of ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... peace. All the highest questions of life rushed with fearful force upon his defenseless, wandering soul. Remarkably strong and passionate with him was the necessity of feeling himself in harmony with God and the universe. What theology offered him was all unintelligible, bitter, and repulsive. To his nature the riddles of the moral order of the universe were most important. That the good should suffer, and the evil succeed; that God should condemn the human race to the monstrous burden of sin because a simple-minded woman had bitten into an apple; ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... Lydiard repeated, as if the expression was perfectly unintelligible to her. "I don't think you have had much experience of dogs, ma'am." She turned to Isabel, and embraced her tenderly. "Give me a kiss, my dear—you don't know how wretched I have been since you left me." She looked back again at Miss Pink. "You are not, perhaps, aware, ma'am, that my dog is devotedly ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... a sudden cry. Yes, there it was—a hasty memorandum; part of the writing was unintelligible to him, but the main word stood clear ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... and the sight of twenty people all standing round staring at me, quite upset me, and I could only stammer out a few unintelligible words, feeling that my face was blushing scarlet to the very roots ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... in a morning's walk. An ignorant Valtellinese from the mountains of the north, and an ignorant Neapolitan have as yet no means of understanding each other; and what is yet more remarkable, the speech of the unschooled peasant of Genoa is unintelligible to his fellow of Piedmont, who lives less ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... pursuit. No reason for her leaving Coldingham is given by Bede; but a lengthy account of the journey and its occasion is given in the "Liber Eliensis." In the remarkable sculptures on the corbels in the octagon are representations of two scenes that are unintelligible without this account; it is necessary, therefore, to summarise it here. Directly after setting out from Coldingham, which is some ten miles north of the Tweed, not far from the sea, the queen, with two lady companions, Sewenna and Sewara, reached a rocky eminence on the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... "darkness" does. A child might consider that a diamond generated light in the same way as a candle does. He would be mistaken, but this would not affect the correctness of his application of the word "light" to his experience; if he confused light with darkness he must immediately become unintelligible. Good and light are perceived and named—no one can say more of them; the effects of both may be described with more or less accuracy. To say that light is a mode of motion does not define it; we ask at once, What mode? And the ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... men; manly and rational Sydney, inevitable, infallible, inoffensively wise of wit;[3]—they are gone their way, and ours is far diverse; and they and all the less-known, yet pleasantly and brightly endowed spirits of that time, are suddenly as unintelligible to us as the Etruscans—not a feeling they had that we can share in; and these pictures of them will be to us valuable only as the sculpture under the niches far in the shade there of the old parish church, dimly vital images of inconceivable creatures ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... his legs, his emaciated body are covered with a fine ash powder, his long hair is matted with cinders and cow-dung, his mad eyes stare across the river into the infinite, at that which we cannot see, as he stands shouting unintelligible, maybe mad words, maybe not, to the glory of ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... up as the real theatre of man's destiny and the fit measure of his achievements. It is that sense of the eternity of consequences—and that sense only—which can satisfy the human heart. Time is too short, this planet is too small, and this mortal body is too weak for the surging thoughts, the unintelligible desires of the soul. Nothing less than infinity can hallow emotions: their passingness—which seems the rule in the fever and turmoil of city life—is not their abatement but their degradation. Change they must, but ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... not seem to have tried deliberately to reveal himself, yet he has revealed himself in that short personal note-book almost as much as the great inspired egotists, Rousseau and St. Augustine. True, there are some passages in the book which are unintelligible to us; that is natural in a work which was not meant to be read by the public; broken flames of the white passion that consumed him bursting through the armour of ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... treated the matter in an easy vein, not without some hints of deep learning, and made fun of the lucubrations of the two physicians. My preface was in French, but full of Parisian idioms which rendered it unintelligible to all who had not visited the gay capital, and this circumstance gained me a good many friends amongst the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... this man to be our guide of two days' journey. As clearly as possible by signs, we made him understand our object; and he engaged to conduct us in sight of a good pass which he knew. Here we ceased to hear the Shoshonee language—that of this man being perfectly unintelligible. Several Indians, who had been waiting to see what reception he would meet with, now came into camp; and, accompanied by the new-comers, ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont |
