"Indescribably" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on the various leaves was pleasant to hear. More especially marked were the flat low-toned bumps and splashes of large drops from the trees on the broad horizontal leaves of Echinopanax horridum, like the drumming of thundershower drops on veratrum and palm leaves, while the mosses were indescribably beautiful, so fresh, so bright, so cheerily green, and all so low and calm and silent, however heavy and wild the wind and the rain blowing and pouring above them. Surely never a particle of dust has touched leaf or crown of all these blessed mosses; and how bright were the ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... the manner and look of the speaker as he uttered these words, so strange, so sinister, so indescribably suggestive of his meaning much more than he said, that Gabriel felt his heart sink within him instantly; and almost at the same moment this fearful question forced itself irresistibly on his mind: might not his father have followed him ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... the blind! It was all beautiful, joy-giving. The thought of her mother fidgeting for her return home was delightful. The thought of Mr. Cannon and Miss Gailey, separated during many years, and now destined to some kind of reconciliation was indescribably touching, and beautiful in a way that she could ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... hardly needing to be named. Who has not searched in dim New England woods, under solemn pines, for the sweet, shy, waxen clusters of this dearest of all the flowery train, hiding under old rusty leaves, but betraying itself by that indescribably delicious fragrance which perfumes the wood paths? Surely all the young hands have been filled with the pilgrim's-flower, the epigaea, the trailing arbutus, the beloved May-flower of olden and of ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... fruit-eater, who does not appreciate their exquisite flavour, and who does not consider them worthy to rank with any of the finest fruits. By many a really fine mango is considered to be the king of fruits, and I am not at all certain that they are not right, but, at the same time, a really bad mango is indescribably bad. ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson
... cremation grounds—desert places, destitute of any other vegetation than the Caprifolia horrida. Each family has its furnace kept in good repair. The place is doleful, and a funeral scene on the only sunless day I experienced in Ladak was indescribably dismal. After death no one touches the corpse but the lamas, who assemble in numbers in the case of a rich man. The senior lama offers the first prayers, and lifts the lock which all Tibetans wear at the back of the head, in order to ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... sight of the first iceberg, or until the 2nd of July that they reached Resolution Island, the valleys of which were filled with snow, while a dense fog hung over the land, rendering the scene before them indescribably dreary and desolate. In a short time the ships were surrounded by no less than six hundred and fifty-four icebergs, one of which rose to two hundred and fifty-eight feet above the sea. Among them were large floes, which were turned round and round by the strong tides ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... the lip, a kind of rivet is formed by twine bound round the inner extremity, and this, protruding into the space left by the extraction of the four front teeth of the lower jaw, entices the tongue to act upon the extremity, which gives it a wriggling motion indescribably ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... that of the sky, and the sky is of clear, full blue. The resulting purple, obtained by the blending of the blue and the orange-red, broken by the play of innumerable gradations in the stones, is indescribably lovely. ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... in the cool night air, and then, having slept for about three quarters of an hour, I opened my eyes without moving, awakened by an indescribably confused and strange sensation. At first I saw nothing, and then suddenly it appeared to me as if a page of the book, which had remained open on my table, turned over of its own accord. Not a breath of air had come in at my window, and I was surprised ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... church the effect of being draped in damask linen; and even where the marble is carven in vast and heavy folds over a pulpit to simulate a curtain, or wrought in figures on the steps of the high-altar to represent a carpet, it has no richness of effect, but a poverty, a coldness, a harshness indescribably table-clothy. I think all this has tended to chill the soul of the sacristan, who is the feeblest and thinnest sacristan conceivable, with a frost of white hair on his temples quite incapable of thawing. In this dreary sanctuary ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... hand. It was chiefly through a donation of 260l., given to be employed as most needed, spoken of under the Building Fund Income on May 14th, 1853, of which I took 160l. for the Orphans, that we had so large an amount in hand. This donation was indescribably precious, as it not only, in conjunction with the other money which came in, carried me easily through all the expenses which absolutely needed to be met, and which were heavier than they ever had been ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... indescribably and asked so many questions about seafaring in the way of civil conversation, would probably have shown small interest in the adventures of a seaman in search of a lodging ashore. She would have smiled, of course, with her own little lift and fall of shy eyes, and been as intangible and desirable ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... greatest shock I have ever had in my life. When he was well on in the forties he suddenly fell with a crash, and had to fly the country. He was never able to show his face in England again, and died a diseased exile in a foreign land. And all because he had been overtaken by sexual sin of an indescribably shameful kind. The shock he gave me was one of sorrow, for he had been a friend. But it was still more one of amazement that such a thing could have happened to such a man. Later I came to understand. When his effects were being sold there was found in his study cupboard a ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... by your Christian names. Do you know, Mr. Kearney'—and his voice trembled now as he spoke—'that to a lone and desolate man like myself, who has no home, and scarcely a country, there is something indescribably touching in the mere picture of the fireside, and the family gathered round it, talking over little homely cares and canvassing the changes of each day's fortune. I could sit here half the night and listen to Atlee telling how you lived, ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... were indescribably odious, reminding Sofia of the creature Sturm; he had a laugh like that for her, on the rare occasion when chance propinquity encouraged the Boche to begin one of ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... of peace to-day as we drove through the country. The air had the indescribably sweet smell of ripening grain, clover-blooms, and new hay; for the high stands of wild hay around the ponds and lakes are all being cut this year, and even the timothy along the roads, and there was a mellow undertone of mowing machines everywhere, like the distant hum of a city. ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... stood in irregular groups of twos and threes, chumming cozily together as their occupants had doubtless done, and over the piano had been carelessly thrown a long, filmy silk scarf, one end hanging to the floor. Upon everything the dust was indescribably thick and cobwebs hung from ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... the lad, albeit manly enough when awake, had sufficient of the child still about him to induce a tendency on his part, when asleep, to make use of any willing friend as a pillow. Thorer the Thick was also there, with his head on his arm, his body sprawling indescribably, his shield above him like a literal coverlet, and his ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... there is one building among others in which one would expect to discover scrupulous cleanliness it is a hospital, but this accommodation provided for the German recruits was in an indescribably filthy condition. The conveniences for the patients were in a deplorable state. They had neither been disinfected nor cleaned for months. Faecal matter and other filth had been left to dry, harden and adhere with the tenacity of glue to the ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... into another, seemed to be life itself. Yet it was not an earth-like scene. The colors of the passing landscape were such as no man in the room had ever beheld; and the people, tall, round-limbed, with florid complexion, golden hair, and brilliant eyes and lips, were indescribably beautiful and graceful ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... island, bleak and inhospitable, and strangely metallic, met his gaze. The rays of the sun beating down upon it were thrown back with an uncomfortable intensity; the substance of the island was a lustrous, copperlike metal. No soil softened the harshness of the surface; indescribably rugged and pitted was the two hundred-foot expanse. It reminded Parkinson of a bronze ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... some unfinished. Most were of nymphs and winged elves, but there were three landscapes. One of these, a stream reflecting a high spring sky between banks of young meadow grass, showed a little faun skipping merrily in the distance. The atmosphere was indescribably light-hearted. Mary smiled as she looked at it. The other two were empty of figures; they were delicately graceful and alluring, but there was something lacking in them—-what, she could not tell. She liked best a sketch of a baby boy, lost amid trees, behind which wood- nymphs ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... Pao-yue was indescribably joyous, and, as he raised his head, he perceived that the text on the tablet consisted of the three characters: the Board of Ill-fated lives; and that on each side was a scroll ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... hospitals were far off at Scutari, the wide and stormy Black Sea had to be crossed to reach them; the stores of food, clothing, and medicine that might have saved many a life were at Varna, or lost in the Black Prince; the state of the great Barrack Hospital at Scutari was indescribably horrible; everybody was frantic to rush to the relief; no one knew what best to do; public feeling was at fever-heat. How could it be otherwise when William Howard Russell, the Times correspondent, was constantly writing such true but heartrending letters ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... and other domestic offices, and the coach-house and stables, with the lawn, fountain, and flower beds between, the buildings being shaded not only by the broad veranda, but also by rows of orange, lemon, lime, and peach trees, the fragrance from which imparted an indescribably refreshing character to the air. Turning to the left as they emerged from the hall, Carlos conducted his friend along the left wing until they reached the last door but one, which the young Cuban threw open, ushering his friend into a neatly furnished and clean ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... when a man is in difficulties that he is more disposed to look upon with abhorrence than a rightabout retrograde movement—a systematic going over of the already trodden ground: and especially if he has a love of adventure, such a course appears indescribably repulsive, so long as there remains the least hope to be ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... also in ceaseless activity around the sketchers, filling the air with those indescribably quiet noises which are so suggestive of that general happiness which was originally in terrestrial paradise and is ultimately to be the ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... so that the cranes when they arrive find their enemy already arrayed. And at first they preen themselves and do not give battle, but when they are fully rested after their great journey they attack the pigmies with indescribably fury so that many are ...
— Plays of Gods and Men • Lord Dunsany
... late cave dwellers raced through the sweet smelling woods, indescribably fresh and fragrant after the cleansing, purifying rain, and launched the canoes upon a river Sparkling like a sheet of diamonds in the clear morning sunlight. How wonderfully new and bright the rain-washed earth looked everywhere, and how exhilarating the fresh rushing ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... over all restraint. An immoderate laughter followed, in which no one joined more heartily than the brother himself. The storm of merriment, however, had hardly passed, when the Bishop, in one of those indescribably solemn tones for which he was distinguished, said, "Brethren, I always find it difficult to maintain the proper spiritual equilibrium without a good deal of prayer." Then, turning to the offending brother, he added, "Brother, will you lead us in prayer?" The ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... was indescribably threatening. "This is the machine we are out to smash," I had said to myself when I saw him savaging his servant in the hall and I repeated the phrase to myself now. But to the General I said: ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... socks where they showed though the rifts in the leather. This the judge did gaily, now humming a snatch of song, now listening civilly to Mahaffy, now replying with undisturbed cheerfulness. Last of all he clapped his dingy beaver on his head, giving it an indescribably jaunty slant, ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... rough soldier, who had never said a gentle word to an inferior, replied in an indescribably sweet and affectionate voice, "I am only a captain; you are ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... grovel like a brain-sick fool and plead with her for a love which I already know is poison to my soul! Helen, Helen! You do not understand—you will never understand! Here, in the very air I breathe, I fancy I can trace the perfume she shakes from her garments as she moves; something indescribably fascinating yet terrible attracts me to her; it is an evil attraction, I know, but I cannot resist it. There is something wicked in every man's nature; I am conscious enough that there is something detestably wicked in mine, and I have not sufficient goodness to overbalance it. And this ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... trimmed with the usual amount of gold braid;" but something far more interesting than the visit of any man, however famous, began to absorb the attention of our imprisoned hero at this time. He had never ceased to rack his brain with schemes looking to his escape. A life of captivity was indescribably wearisome to him. He not only taxed his own ingenuity in the effort to discover some feasible plan, but eagerly entered into the schemes of others. The result, however, so far as he was individually concerned, was by no means in accordance with his hopes; but, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... change. The most divine of gifts had been granted him—an opportunity to save her from harm, perhaps from death. He had served her father. How greatly he could not tell, but if measured by the gratitude in her eyes it would have been infinite. He recalled that expression—blue, warm, soft, and indescribably strange with its unuttered hidden meaning. It was all-satisfying for him to realize that she had been compelled to give him a separate and distinct place in her mind. He must stand apart from all others she knew. It had been his fortune to ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... indescribably rough. The desert floor became a series of sand dunes, a rise and fall of sea-like billows over which they climbed like ants over a new-plowed field. In the hollow of each wave they rested, sinking in the sand, where, breathless and scorching, the air scintillated above ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... of this preparation, half an hour after my father had left us, we heard a great uproar in the street. At first we thought the shouts were only rejoicings for victory, but as they came nearer we heard screechings and yellings indescribably horrible. A mob had gathered at the gates of the barrack-yard, and joined by many soldiers of the yeomanry on leaving parade, had followed Major Eustace and my father from the barracks. The Major being this ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... upon the valley as of old; the great bird was poised aloft in the clear blue air, and the mountain wind came over the heights and blew refreshingly around the children as they sat on the sunlit slope. It was all indescribably enjoyable to Clara and Heidi. Now and again a young goat came and lay down beside them; Snowflake came oftenest, putting her little head down near Heidi, and only moving because another goat came and drove ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... glow, and proclaimed itself a ball of light. It illuminated the face that was but a few inches removed from it. In the midst of that absolute darkness the effect was indescribably weird. Nothing for some moments was visible but just that ball of light and the dark face with the piercing eyes gleaming out from slits in ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... awakened by the wild ravings of delirious agony,—those sounds so fearful in themselves, so awful in the silence and darkness of night, so indescribably awful in the solitude of ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... indescribably disagreeable voice, which we all by this time knew so well, asked, "Has anybody seen that sojering ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... you astonish and pain me indescribably when you speak as you have just done. Little you know of my beloved Wallace. Had you had the good fortune to meet so noble a man, you would perceive how impossible it is for his widow, indeed his wife, as I consider myself, ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... lower tones were peculiarly suited for the utterance of vehement passion, producing an extraordinary effect by the splendid and unexpected contrast which they enabled her to give to the sweetness of the upper tones, causing a kind of musical discordance indescribably pathetic and melancholy. Her accents were so plaintive, so penetrating, so profoundly tragical, that no one could ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... about the crenellated turrets; and a row of poplars, standing like black, phantasmal guardians of the evil place, bent groaning before its fury. From the running waters of the moat, swollen by recent rains, came a gurgling sound that was indescribably wicked. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... to the public in ragged clothes. His face was deeply pitted with the small-pox. His short grisly hair stood up stiff and straight on his head like hair fixed in a broom. His small whitish-grey eyes had a restless, inquisitive, hungry look in them, indescribably irritating and uncomfortable to see. The one personal distinction he possessed consisted in his magnificent bass voice—a voice which had no sort of right to exist in the person who used it. Until one became accustomed ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... in character that described by Hawthorne as occurring in the grounds of the Villa Borghese when Donatello, with a simple "tambourine," produced music of such "indescribably potency" that sallow, haggard, half-starved peasants, French soldiers, scarlet-costumed contadinas, Swiss guards, German artists, English lords, and herdsmen from the Campagna, all "joined hands in the dance" which the musician himself led with the frisky, frolicsome ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... Uncle Michel, you'll never have anybody else as naughty and troublesome as I have been,' said Marie, pressing close to him. She was indescribably happy. She was to be saved from the lover whom she did not want. She was to have the lover whom she did want. And, over and above all this, a spirit of kind feeling and full sympathy existed once more between her and her dear friend. As she offered no advice in regard to the disposal of the gentleman ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... from a dusky chrysalis, came the Eastern day, and we felt as if living in a world warmed by a hundred suns. The warm, intoxicating light took possession of our senses, and so sweet, so rarefied, so indescribably delicious was the air, that it seemed to give wings to our dull bodies. Every now and then we were overtaken by clouds of locusts, their little wings glistening like diamonds against the soft sky, ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... 'bearing testimony' as her father would have borne it in like circumstances. But she turned very pale. Even to her the word 'Christian' sounded like a bombshell in that room. The great traveller looked up astounded. He saw a tall woman in white with a beautiful head, a delicate face, a something indescribably noble and unusual in her whole look and attitude. She looked like a Quaker prophetess—like Dinah Morris in society—like—but his comparisons failed him. How did such a being come there? He was amazed; but he was a man of taste, and Madame de Netteville caught a certain aesthetic approbation ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... derision rose up from the rim of the bluff as the burly sheepman went down, but it changed to a sudden shout of warning as he scrambled back to his feet again. There was something indescribably vengeful about him as he whirled upon his enemy, and his hand went inside his torn shirt in a ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... once a king who had a daughter whose name was Stella. She was indescribably beautiful, but was so whimsical and hard to please that she drove her father to despair. There had been princes and kings who had sought her in marriage, but she had found defects in them all and would have ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... object now was to reach Tibneen in the Belad Besharah, and therefore we kept on due west, ascending up to the great crusading castle and the village of Huneen, from which the look back upon Jebel esh Shaikh (Hermon) was indescribably grand. ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... door to the office of the Greenstream Bugle, diagonally across the street. Within, the week's edition was going to press; a burly young individual was turning the cylinders by hand, while the editor and owner dexterously removed the printed sheets from the press. The office was indescribably grimy, the rude ceiling was hung with dusty cobwebs, the windows obscured by a grey film. A small footpress stood to the left of the entrance, on the right were ranged typesetter's cases with high, precarious stools, a handpress for proof and a table to hold the leaded ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... together, which were calm and peaceful and should have been happy, the girl would know, with the second-sight of love, that he was thinking about Eugenia. And this phantom, of which she never spoke to him and could not have borne him to know of, tormented her indescribably. It seemed like a spell that she knew not how to break. It was only a thought, yet how much it made her suffer! Giving way for the moment to the useless and futile bitterness of her jealousy, she had leant her head on the cushion of the ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... by Mr. Edmund Gabriel, the British Commissioner for the suppression of the slave-trade there, and everything was done by him for his comfort. The sensation of lying on an English bed, after six months lying on the ground, was indescribably delightful. Mr. Gabriel was equally attentive to him during a long and distressing attack of fever and dysentery that prostrated him soon after his arrival at Loanda. In his Journal the warmest benedictions are poured on Mr. Gabriel, and blessings ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... came back from church to Owen's sitting-room—not bear and monkey, not genie and fairy, as he had expected to see; but as they stood together, looking so indescribably and happily one, that Owen smiled and said, 'Ah! Honor, if you had only known twenty years ago that this was Mrs. Peter Prendergast, how much trouble it ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Agnes. "Last time he forgot I was coming altogether." She wore a flowered muslin—something indescribably liquid and cool. It reminded him a little of those swift piercing streams, neither blue nor green, that gush out of the dolomites. Her face was clear and brown, like the face of a mountaineer; her hair was so plentiful that it seemed ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... indescribably sweet in the quiet, self-respecting friendliness of my cat, in her marked predilection for my society. The absence of exuberance on her part, and the restraint I put upon myself, lend an element of dignity to our intercourse. Assured ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... was the only way in which life after death could be understood—life eternal. The resurrection of the body, which the Church promises, was to be interpreted as the renewal of one's own personality in the coming generations. Oh, there was something great, something indescribably comforting ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... that if the truth be known, I drew back in fear, for there is no beast so fierce and dangerous as a bull. I saw sitting upon a stump, with a great club in his hand, a rustic lout, as black as a mulberry, indescribably big and hideous; indeed, so passing ugly was the creature that no word of mouth could do him justice. On drawing near to this fellow, I saw that his head was bigger than that of a horse or of any other beast; that his hair was in tufts, leaving his forehead bare for a width of more than two spans; ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... effect of such teaching on humanity? It is impossible to doubt that it has led to results deplorably, indescribably wicked. Whence, for instance, arose the horrors of the mediaeval inquisition, the insensate tortures inflicted upon men like Huss and Bruno solely for theological errors, if not from belief in this demon-deity whom the Church worshipped? If their practices were but a shadow ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... for from no other man, I was confident, could have issued so sepulchral a plaint. It was unmusical, unbeautiful, unlively, and indescribably doleful. Yet the words showed that it should have ripped and crackled with high spirits and lawlessness, for the words ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... befell him was ridicule,—which, even when he was aware of it, hurt him little. Often, indeed, he would receive their jests and artful civilities with implicit good faith; acknowledging apparent attentions with a gentle, kindly courtesy, indescribably mystifying to those excellent young men who expended so much needless pains on the easy work of "selling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... ghost, once in the shape of an indeterminate mist, once in the shape of a man, who came in by the door and vanished in the wall. Mrs. 'G.'[B] now appears on the scene, and slept in No. 1 (I think). She heard only the bangings, which she declares were indescribably loud. They were mostly at the door of the haunted room. Traps were laid to catch unwary jesters; the door, or the surrounding floor, I forget which, was covered with flour, and wires were stretched across the door; and if I had ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... friendship entirely different from any Gordon had known before. He did not know what his real sentiments were; he did not even attempt to analyse them. He only knew that when he was with Morcombe he was indescribably happy. There was something in him so natural, so unaffected, so sensitive to beauty. After this Morcombe came up to Gordon's study nearly every evening, and usually Foster left them alone together, and went off ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... I drew nearer, still concealing myself behind the ridge, I saw that thick bars of iron covered the windows, while the old door was slashed and plated with the same metal. These strange precautions, together with the wild surroundings and unbroken solitude, gave an indescribably ill omen and fearsome character to the solitary building. Thrusting my pipe into my pocket, I crawled upon my hands and knees through the gorse and ferns until I was within a hundred yards of my neighbour's door. ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ignorant of some things is not inconsistent with his endowments; for he himself avowed his ignorance, saying, "Of that day knoweth no man; no, not even the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." And it adds an awful solemnity, an indescribably exciting interest, to his departure from the world, to conceive him hovering on the verge of the same mystery which has enveloped every passing mortal, hovering there with chastened wonder and curiosity, inspired with an absolute trust ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... sing-song voice used by Father Beret in his sermons and prayers; but something went with it indescribably touching. Farnsworth felt a lump rise in his throat and his eyes were ready to show tears. "Father," he said, with difficulty making his words distinct, "I would not harm Miss Roussillon to save my own life, and I would do anything—" he paused slightly, then ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... grey and indescribably sombre background stood the smouldering ship with the breeze already shivering in her sails, and the smoke from her main-hatch blowing and beckoning as ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... rest for my oppressed heart; but as this is not possible, I often hurry, without knowing why, into the street. But there also nothing allays or diverts my longing. I return home to... long again indescribably... I have not yet rehearsed my Concerto; in any case I shall leave all my treasures behind me by Michaelmas. In Vienna I shall be condemned to sigh and groan! This is the consequence of having no longer a free heart! You who know this indescribable power so well, explain ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... his life Kemp discovered that the hill-road was indescribably vast and desolate, and that the beginnings of the town far below at the hill foot were strangely remote. Never had there been a slower or more painful method of progression than running. All the gaunt villas, sleeping in the afternoon sun, ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... anybody." His intelligence can be judged from one crucial point: he fastened on the fact that Oscar had burnt the letters which he bought from Wood, which he said were of no importance, except that they concerned third parties. The Judge had persuaded himself that the letters were indescribably bad, forgetting apparently that Wood or his associates had selected and retained the very worst of them for purposes of blackmail and that this Judge himself, after reading it, couldn't attribute any weight to it; still he insisted that ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... was indescribably taunting, and of a sudden Buck saw red. Dominated by the single-minded impulse of primeval man to use the weapons nature gave him, he forgot momentarily that he carried a gun. When the two men entered, ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... Porte Saint-Martin, and soon after created the role of Don Caesar de Bazan, a part in which he was indescribably delightful, and of which he was the real author. The play, written by Dumanoir and Dennery, was roundly condemned by the critics for its weakness, but the actor created prodigious effects, and the piece obtained a great success. In the Ragpicker of Paris, a sort of honest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... fire-light gleaming upon the savage and uncouth figures of the men, their natural dark hue being made absolutely horrible by the paintings bestowed on them, consisting of lines and other marks done in white and red pipe-clay, which gives them an indescribably ghastly and fiendish aspect—their strange attitudes, and violent contortions and movements, and the unearthly sound of their yells, mingled with the wild and monotonous wail-like chant of the women, ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... throne is at the upper end of the drawing room No. 5, and from the chimney of the room No. 3, the vista through the middle doors of the anti-drawing-rooms is about 200 feet!! Thecoup d'oeil must be indescribably grand, when all the three apartments are filled with rank and beauty. The ceilings of the principal rooms, 3, 4, and 5, are coved upon handsome cornices, carved and gilt. This gives the apartments a spacious and lofty appearance; and ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... undertone, as said above, was a squawk; again it resembled a squeal; now it was petulant, as though the performer scoffed at his own singing; and then it was a perfect copy of the song itself, given in an indescribably sneering manner. I could think of nothing but the way in which one child will sometimes mock the ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... but as he was presented to the newspaper public every characteristic lent itself to elaboration. He was, in fact, flaringly anecdotal. As a newly elected President who has made boots or driven a canal-boat in his unconsidered youth endears himself indescribably to both paragraph reader and paragraph purveyor, so did T. Tembarom endear himself. For weeks, he was a perennial fount. What quite credible story cannot be related of a hungry lad who is wildly flung by chance ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... moving around that circle, delivering her fire invariably at the point of contact, and heard the crash of the missile against her enemy's armor above the thunder of her guns, on the bank where we stood. It was indescribably grand! ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.
... Quite indescribably strange is the effect on my mind of looking back at my three Thespian avatars—Falstaff at Cincinnati, Acres and Sir Anthony in Grand Ducal Florence, and Sir Anthony again in a liberated Tuscany! I seem to myself like some old mail-coach guard, who goes through the whole long journey, ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... blind devotion of Akim and finally mentioned so significantly the wishes of their mistress that Dunyasha went out of the room with a look of hesitation on her face and meeting Akim only gazed intently into his face and did not turn away. The indescribably lavish presents of the love-sick man dissipated her last doubts. Lizaveta Prohorovna, to whom Akim in his joy took a hundred peaches on a large silver dish, gave her consent to the marriage, and the marriage took place. Akim spared no expense—and the bride, who on the eve of her ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... mind from the noises over the hedge. But every head-line seemed to dart at her sore consciousness as if it were a snake's head with a sting in it. Murder. Unrest. Strikes. Dissatisfactions. Change. The whole outlook was indescribably comfortless and depressing to her. She felt something akin to the vague, apprehensive misery—beyond reason or common sense—which people feel during the rumble of ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... and always peeled each date delicately with her preposterous lips before eating it, and during the process she would apply the date to her nose every second to test its quality or enjoy its aroma. The action was indescribably comical, but what would it have been if her nostrils had been situated among her ribs? Imagine a mantis, for example, as he chews up a fly, lifting one of his wings and applying it to his flanks to see if it smells gamey. That is where some naturalists believe that the sense of smell is situated ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... of eyes remained to haunt and torment Gale. It was indescribably sweet, and provocative of thoughts that he believed were wild without warrant. Something within him danced for very joy, and the next instant he was conscious of wistful doubt, a gravity that he could not understand. It dawned upon him that for the brief instant when Nell had met ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... the evening with a feeling and taste indescribably fine, but as he had no Scottish or English songs, my ears were not much gratified. I have no sense beyond Mungo: "What signify me ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the most marvellous collection of Japanese things. It is a most choice collection. There were some such funny things—a fiance and fiancee of Japan in costume were killing! and made-up monsters like life-sized mummies of the most hideous demons! Besides indescribably exquisite workmanship of all sorts. The pictures are not so charming a collection as those at Antwerp, but there are some grand ones. Tell Mother—Paul Potter's Bull is too indescribable! His nose, his hair, and a frog at his feet are wonderful! There is ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... know in the least for what reason, Mrs. Sedley looked at her husband and laughed. Mr. Sedley's eyes twinkled in a manner indescribably roguish, and he looked at Amelia; and Amelia, hanging down her head, blushed as only young ladies of seventeen know how to blush, and as Miss Rebecca Sharp never blushed in her life—at least not since she was eight years ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... The scene looked indescribably desolate, and yet there was a certain beauty in it, too. I had been told exactly how to reach the House by the Lock, and when, after passing the somewhat weedy-looking lock, I began skirting along a species of backwater, and ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... taken. When I got two months' leave I invited myself there as a matter of course, fully expecting to stay most of my time with them, but I made an excuse to get away after a week. The place was dismal and unendurable, the whole life and atmosphere indescribably depressing." He looked round with an instinct of caution, leaned forward earnestly, and dropped his voice. "Mr. Carrados, it is my absolute conviction that Creake is only waiting for a favourable opportunity to ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... This is really one of the most covetable little volumes in the world. It is a copy printed UPON VELLUM; with most beautiful illuminations, in the purest Italian taste. Look—if ever you visit the Imperial Library—at the last illumination, at the bottom of o v, recto. It is indescribably elegant. But the binder should have been hung in chains. He has cut the book to the very quick—so as almost to have entirely sliced away ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... He was, in truth, indescribably shocked. Deadham presented itself to his mind as a place accursed, a veritable sink of iniquity. High and low alike, its inhabitants were under condemnation.—And he had so enjoyed his tea with the ladies at The ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... to his own chamber there was a sharp turn, and it was just here, while groping round the walls with outstretched hands, that his fingers touched something that was not wall—something that moved. It was soft and warm in texture, indescribably fragrant, and about the height of his shoulder; and he immediately thought of a furry, sweet-smelling kitten. The next minute he knew it was something ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... scares from our midst the shy spirits of Beauty and of Poesy. Nor is it solely because it appeals to the poetic feelings in us that this country endears itself to my heart. It is the perfect republic: the sense of emancipation experienced in it by the wanderer from the Old World is indescribably sweet and novel. Even in our ultra-civilised condition at home we do periodically escape back to nature; and, breathing the fresh mountain air and gazing over vast expanses of ocean and land, we find that she is still very much to us. It is ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... treated me with neglect; but, as I grew older and reflected on everything, putting aside coquetry, and observing things without taking any part in them myself, I perceived this much—that if men are not always polite, women are always indescribably rude. ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... 18 How indescribably blessed is the Christian. It is true that he has to perform his pilgrimage through an enemy's country, beset with snares, pit-falls, and temptations; but in all his buffetings and storms of sorrow, his soul is safe; God is a wall of fire round about it, and the glory in the midst of it. He will ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... green banks, sloping into the water, are sometimes decked with box-trees of uncommon size, sometimes clothed with natural orchards, in which the cherries, pears, pomegranates, and other fruits, growing in their indigenous soil, possess a flavour indescribably exquisite. The bold eminences are crowned with superb forests or majestic ruins, which alternately rule the scenes of this devoted country, from the water's edge to the summit of the mountains. The moral and political condition ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various
... vain for the mischievous ape, who was at length discovered in what my brother dignified by the title of his laboratory, where, in a frenzy of gleeful activity, he was examining first one bottle and then another; finally he betook himself, with indescribably grotesque grinnings and chatterings, to uncorking and sniffing at them, and then pouring their contents deliberately out on the (luckily carpetless) floor,—a joke which might have had serious results for himself, as well as the house, if he had not in the midst ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... hospital bases daily, and many of them have been living for weeks, and even months, filthy in cellars of Hun-shattered villages which are almost continually under fire. They are generally sick, naturally, indescribably dirty and, in fact, mere wraiths of childhood. God, Don, it gets me when I imagine my own nephews ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... upon me an impression indescribably strange. I felt myself standing upon a crisis. I felt called upon to choose between self and self-sacrifice. Had the choice left no chance of saving my own life, I fear I should have obeyed the "first law of nature;" but, as already ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... evinced by the surgeon of the Seahorse to take blood-vengeance upon someone on account of them. His "belly-timber," as old Misson so aptly if indelicately describes it, was mostly worm-eaten or rotten, his drink indescribably nasty. ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... eyes of the woman softened as she looked at June—softened indescribably. They read instantly the doubt and loneliness of the child. She threw the cigar into the street and moved swiftly toward the bride. A moment before she had been hard and sexless, in June's virgin eyes almost a monstrosity. Now she was all mother, ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... bear their icy burden, and when a strong wind arises, the destruction among trees of all kinds is immense. When the sun shines upon the forest covered with this brilliant incrustation, the effect is indescribably beautiful. ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... you interest me indescribably. Do you suppose he was in our rank of life? I mean, of course, did ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... carriages were packed. For those were early days after the war, while men still had pre-war notions and were poor. Ten months would steal imperceptibly by, and the mysterious revolution would be effected. Then, the second class and the first class would be packed, indescribably packed, crowded, on all great trains: and the third class carriages, lo and behold, would be comparatively empty. Oh, marvellous days of bankruptcy, when nobody will condescend ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... There was no answer; the shadowy figure on the chest never moved. Grace rose impulsively, and drawing her chair after her, approached the nurse. "Is there some romance in your life?" she asked. "Why have you sacrificed yourself to the terrible duties which I find you performing here? You interest me indescribably. Give me ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... imprint of a profound spiritual intellect and a benevolent calmness. The queen, Caroline Amalia, after her first meeting with him wrote, "Grundtvig has a most beautiful countenance, and he attracted me at once by his indescribably kind and benevolent appearance. What an interesting man he is, and what a pleasure it is to listen to his open ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... coolly, as he stepped over beside Bodson. Then deliberately, yet with an indescribably swift ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... raving man reiterated names as of a multitude. Gordon's was among them, and many names of women, one especially—Catherine. He repeated that name more frequently than the others, but the others were legion. There was something indescribably horrible in hearing this repetition of names of unknown people, accompanied with statements beyond belief regarding them and the raving man. Gordon's face was ghastly, and so was the younger doctor's. "Look and see if any one is listening, for God's sake," Gordon gasped, ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... restless in body, I got up and went out into the great snow waste. The sunset afterglow was just fading into the moonshine. The effect upon the pure white sheet before me was indescribably beautiful. The warm tint of the last of day, as it waned, dissolved imperceptibly into the cold lustre of the night as if some alchemist were subtly changing the substance while he kept the form. For a new spirit was slowly ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... in the heart of Robinette as she looked, that part of her blood which her English mother had given her. This scene, so indescribably English as hardly to be imaginable in another land, had been painted for her again and again by her mother with all the retrospective romance of an exile's touch. She knew it, but she did not know if she could ever love it, beautiful ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... something indescribably peaceful and even sad about that view, a mute sympathy with the Past that I could hardly account for, seeing that I was Colonial born and bred. For the first time since my arrival in England the real beauty of the place came ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... interiors are the browns and blacks of etchings; the color of the leaves, the old dark timbers, the black faces and hands, and the ragged clothing, combined with the humming of negro voices, the tobacco fragrance, and the golden dust upon the air, make an indescribably complete harmony of ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... before his rapidly increasing glory. When he laid down his brush at the age of thirty-seven, he had finished a career which is one of the miracles of history. His work is a complete epitome of religious art, including all the great themes, and enveloping each with an atmosphere of pure spirituality, indescribably ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... tone took on, in its level pitch of implacability, a quality indescribably horrifying, "No—an honest killing. I am going ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... appearance of one of these melodies is found in the poem chosen for text. Whatever Schubert read, if it interested him, immediately called up within him a melodic form. These melodies not only differ from one another by degrees of indescribably delicate gradation, but each as it comes proves itself adapted to the text which gave it birth. These lovely melodies, moreover, are supported by pianoforte accompaniments which at times rise to a co-ordinate rank ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... employed on this leaflet. His finer senses were as shocked at the meeting as his taste was at the pamphlet. Mingled odors of tobacco-smoke, beer, human breath, and damp clothes filled the air; the people at the tables had an indescribably common stamp, unlovely manners, harsh, loud voices, and unattractive faces. They gossiped and laughed noisily, and coarse expressions were frequent. The earnest moral tone, the almost gloomy melancholy which Wilhelm had found ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... from him and gazed over the lake; it was looking indescribably beautiful, with the ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... the king was cured of an illness by having a few pages of Quintus Curtius read to him. The classics had not refined his taste, for he was amused by setting the wandering scholars, who swarmed to his court, to abuse one another in the indescribably filthy Latin scolding matches which were then the fashion. Alphonso founded nothing, and after his conquest of Naples in 1442 ruled by his mercenary soldiers, and no less mercenary men of letters. His Spanish possessions were ruled for him ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... him a dollar nor had any expectations from any source whatever. "He had married," he said, "for love, and for love only; and his bride was far more than worthy of his love." When I thought of these expressions, on the part of my friend, I confess that I felt indescribably puzzled. Could it be possible that he was taking leave of his senses? What else could I think? He, so refined, so intellectual, so fastidious, with so exquisite a perception of the faulty, and so keen an appreciation ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... riding on a motor-bike through the New Forest at nightfall when the forest seemed full of pixies and the fading sunset was red and grey and golden like the transformation scene of a pantomime. But alas! the next day we found the forest unromantic, and Clapham Common looked indescribably common in the morning sunlight. Our mood had vanished, and although we tried to reproduce the same uplifting emotion the following evening, we couldn't—we had a headache and the gnats were about. So, although I often yearn to ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... brown-haired and eyed. She looked the very hamadryad of some blossoming tree, a sweet capricious daughter of the blameless earth. Everything luxuriated in her—colour, hair, and lusty flesh; and the child she held to her bosom with a manner that indescribably commingled contempt, and resentment, ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... indescribably absurd use of Law-Latin in records, writs, and written pleadings, was finally put an end to by statute 4 George II. c. 26; but this bill, which discarded for legal processes a cumbrous and harsh language, that was alike unmusical ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... to eat. Here was a magnificent spectacle. Above and between the multitudinous shafts of the sunshiny columns was seen the sea, reflecting the purple heaven of noon above it, and supporting, as it were, on its lips the dark lofty mountains of Sorrento, of a blue indescribably deep, and tinged toward their summits with streaks of new fallen snow. Between was one small green island. To the right was Capreae, Inarnine, Prochyta, and Misenum. Behind was the single summit of Vesuvius, rolling forth volumes of thick white smoke, whose foam-like ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... of the valley, and beyond, far below us, looms the town of Sorata. From this distance the red tile roofs, the soft blue, green, and yellow of its stuccoed walls, look indescribably fresh and grateful. A closer inspection will probably dissipate this impression; it will be squalid and dirty, the river-stone paving of its street will be deep in the accumulation of filth, dirty Indian children will swarm in them with mangy dogs and bedraggled ducks, the gay frescoes of its ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... The indescribably wild and thrilling character of gypsy music is thoroughly appreciated by the Russians, who pay very high prices for Romany performances. From five to eight or ten pounds sterling is usually given to a dozen gypsies for singing an hour or two to a special party, and this is sometimes repeated twice ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... unchanging aspect. It was never twice like the same thing to him. Shifting and altering, advancing and retreating, fifty times a day, it was unalterable only in its grandeur. The lake itself too had every kind of varying beauty for him. By moonlight it was indescribably solemn; and before the coming on of a storm had a strange property in it of being disturbed, while yet the sky remained clear and the evening bright, which he found to be mysterious and impressive in an especial degree. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... children will never be a simple and easy thing as long as the world lasts: the value of the finished article may generally be taken as some measure of the labour and care necessary to produce it: and the value of a pure, simple-hearted, well-taught Christian child is so immeasurably and indescribably great, that we may safely conclude that the workmen and workwomen employed in producing the result must have spent upon their work an incredible amount of honest self-denying toil: a perfunctory discharge of ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... in which Sylvia, for all her inexperience, read a real suffering. Aunt Victoria looked as though somebody were hurting her—hurting her awfully—Sylvia pressed her cheek hard against her aunt's, and Mrs. Marshall-Smith felt, soft and Warm and ardent on her lips, the indescribably fresh kiss of a child's mouth. "Oh, little Sylvia!" she cried, in that new, strange, uncertain voice which trembled and broke, "Oh, little Sylvia!" She seemed to be about to say something more, said in fact ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... to receive a welt with a pick handle and a strafe of several marks. Sometimes we only received a mark or two for a week's work. Most of this we spent for soap. It was impossible to work in the mine and not become indescribably dirty, and soap ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... of those shy, timid glances he had noticed before, and began coiling something around her fingers, with a suggestion of coy embarrassment, indescribably inconsistent with ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... The extreme opposite of the congregate system. The prisoners are allowed to have practically no communication with anyone whomsoever. In some countries this system is made indescribably cruel. At Santiago in Chili in one part of the prison the inmates are employed upon useful work under most humane conditions, and yet in another part of the very same building a most barbarous system exists. Mr F. B. ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... through the rifts in the half-naked trees; into the sky, clear and sparkling beyond; on his face an expression of sadness, of joy, of abandon—all blended indescribably. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... wave from the instruments reached him he felt himself borne away in a sort of nervous intoxication, which thrilled body and mind indescribably. His imagination ran riot, made drunk by melody, and carried him along through sweet dreams and charming reveries. With closed eyes, legs crossed, and folded arms, he listened to the strains, and gave himself up to the visions that passed ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... grass to little hummocks or to the twigs which form the boles of elm trees. Others still, with less ambitious span, went only from one blade of grass to another or united the thorns of whin bushes. The lower air, near the earth, was full of these threads. They formed an indescribably delicate net cast right over the fields and hills. I used to see them glistening, rainbow coloured when the sun rays struck them. Oftener I was aware of their presence only when my hands had touched and broken them ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... the establishment speedily appeared. She had been a splendid Jewish beauty, and still in middle age, had great owl-like eyes, and a complexion that did her credit to her arts; but there was something indescribably repulsive in her fawning, deferential curtsey, as she said, in a flattering tone, with a slightly foreign accent, "The pretty lady is come, as our noble dame promised, to explain to the poor Cora Darke the great queen's secret! Ah! ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... view on a clear day is splendid. On the slope stand a few large trees, whose cleft leaves frame the indescribably blue sea, which breaks in snowy lines in the lava-boulders below. Far off, I can see Malekula, with its forest-covered mountains, and summer clouds hanging above it. It is a dreamlike summer day, so beautiful, bright ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... are supposed here to have had many mistresses in Paris; and to a woman there is something indescribably inviting in a man whom other women favor—something attractive and fascinating; is it that she prides herself on being longer remembered than all the rest? that she appeals to his experience, as a sick man will pay more to a famous physician? or that she is flattered ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... indescribably horrible, you know If only it had been an ordinary mortal disease—. I am not so much afraid of dying; though, of course, I should like to live as long as ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... indescribably tragic to watch Michelangelo slowly despairing of his own genius and art, and becoming more and more dominated by the thought of the futility of all earthly things and all earthly beauty. The religious conception of eternity and transcendent beauty, the forma universale ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... emblazoned with the dragon of the Hang dynasty, at the rate of from six to twenty dollars a pound. It is yellow, and the decoction from it is almost colorless. A small pinch of it, added to ordinary black tea, gives an indescribably delicious flavor,—the very aroma of the tea-blossom; but one cup of it, unmixed, is said to deprive the drinker of sleep for three nights. We brought some home, and a dose thereof was administered to three unconscious guests during my ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... about passed beyond the radiance of the lights of the hotel when Jack suddenly drew his companions' attention to a figure that was stealing through the darkness hugging a grove of trees. There was something indescribably furtive in the way the man crept along, half crouched and glanced behind him from time ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... greasy body and the powder of dandruff from his long hair on the shoulders of his gown, the malicious way he looked at me as though to say, "You and I know that what I'm saying is rot, but it must be said to them"—it was indescribably disgusting. ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... with its gaudy altars, and twinkling lights, its services, and music, and incense. Indeed, apart from all higher considerations, the pictures, the colouring, the singing, all were the happiest relief to the child, who, used to perpetual change and brightness, wearied indescribably of the dull, colourless life, the uniform dress, the want of all artistic beauty in the convent. Her greatest reward when she had been good was to be allowed to join in the singing in the chapel—her greatest punishment, to be banished from ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... to say something, but at that moment a new sound, indescribably plaintive, echoed through the room, sending a ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... features which gave to them their charm; but in the young man there was infinitely more than this, though effeminate as was his complexion, and the bright sunny curls which floated over his throat, he was eminently and indescribably beautiful, for it was the mind, the glorious mind, the kindling spirit which threw their radiance over his perfect features; the spirit and mind which that noble form enshrined stood apart, and though he knew it not himself, ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... The committee-man comes like Nemesis, aequo pede, the lesson is unlearned, and the stern-fibred little teacher orders out the rack known as staying after school. But what durance beyond hours in the indescribably desolate schoolroom ever taught mortal boy to shun the delusive insect created for his special undoing? So long as the heart has woes of its own breeding, so long also will it dodge the discipline of labor, and grasp at the flicker of ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... long eyebrows, they were set, like a kite's eyes, in eyelids so broad, and bordered by so dark a circle sharply defined on his cheek, that they seemed rather prominent. These singular eyes had in them something indescribably domineering and piercing, which took possession of the soul by a grave and thoughtful look, a look as bright and lucid as that of a serpent or a bird, but which held one fascinated and crushed by the swift communication of some tremendous sorrow, ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... moments, which she had been destined to experience once or twice before, when the whole personality of her husband seemed to become shadowy before her, to slip, as it were, past her comprehension, leaving her indescribably lonely and ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... were indescribably horrible. I may occasionally write or talk of the circumstance with levity, but whenever I recall it to mind, I tremble at the bare recollection of the dreadful fate that seemed inevitable. My companion was not so expert a swimmer as ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... presented by the balete is very frequently indescribably picturesque; and this is so true that, within a space of some hundred paces in diameter—which these gigantic fig-trees usually occupy—one may see by turns grottoes, halls, chambers, that are often furnished with ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... something indescribably winning, it seemed to me, in Cousin Monica. Old as she was, she seemed to me so girlish, compared with those slow, unexceptionable young ladies whom I had met in my few visits at the county houses. By this time my shyness was quite gone, and I was on the most intimate ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... hours' fast marching we had made the distance, say, from the clubhouse to the second hole. Then we camped in a genuinely little grove of really small trees overlooking a green valley bordered with wooded hills. The prospect was indescribably delightful; a sort of Sunday-morning landscape of groves and green grass and a feeling of ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... his guitar with him, and his voice, which had gained much in depth and richness, was indescribably sweet. It seemed as if Mr. Fairland never would tire of hearing the brother and sister sing together. His mills and everything else were forgotten, while he sat silently in his great chair with his eyes closed, listening hour after hour to the blended harmony ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... searchingly now on one face, now on another. The dripping rustle of the rain among the leaves, and the clear, ceaseless tick of the clock on the mantel-piece, made the minute of silence which followed the settling of the persons present in their places indescribably oppressive. It was a relief to every one when Mr. ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... Bigotry tends to an indescribably tiresome kind of humility which does not exclude pride. Whether from modesty or by choice, Madame de Granville seemed to have a horror of light and cheerful colors; perhaps, too, she imagined that brown and purple beseemed the dignity of a magistrate. How could a girl accustomed to an austere ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... and their insight are not of the same quality. Here is a musician who is a greater master than anyone else in the discovering of tones, peculiar to suffering, oppressed, and tormented souls, who can endow even dumb misery with speech. Nobody can approach him in the colours of late autumn, in the indescribably touching joy of a last, a very last, and all too short gladness; he knows of a chord which expresses those secret and weird midnight hours of the soul, when cause and effect seem to have fallen asunder, and at every moment something may spring out of nonentity. He is happiest of all ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... and the knife, or rather dagger, with which he had menaced Aram, an instrument sharpened on both sides, and nearly a foot in length. Altogether, what with his muscular breadth of figure, his hard and rugged features, his weapons, and a certain reckless, bravo air which indescribably marked his attitude and bearing, it was not well possible to imagine a fitter habitant for that grim cave, or one from whom men of peace, like Eugene Aram, might have seemed to derive more reasonable cause ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Comique, and the best performers from the Italian opera. The solos were sung by Mesdames Grimm and Couraud, and by Bassine and Chapuis, the latter being one of the best tenors in the city. Some of the quartettes, with accompaniments of harps and wind instruments, were indescribably beautiful. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... was disclosed on her bow. Her red hawse-holes showed like glowering and savage eyes. There was indescribably brutal threat in this sudden dart in their direction. It was as if a sea monster had swallowed an insect in the shape of a Hampton boat and now sought a real mouthful. But her great rudder swung to the quick pull of her steam steering-gear and again ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... solemnity. Surrounded by the ruins of man's glory, we felt deeply how unchanging was the word of God. In a city of gorgeous ceremonials that had changed Christianity into a kind of baptized paganism, we felt it indescribably refreshing to partake, in the beautiful simplicity of our own worship, of the symbols of the broken body and shed blood of our Lord. We seemed to be compassed about with a great cloud of witnesses, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan |
