"Untranslatable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unfinish, careless nudity, slovenly hiatus, coming from intrinsic genius, and not "put on," that secretly pleases the soul more than the wrought and re-wrought polish of the most perfect verse?) Mark the native spice and untranslatable twang in the very names of his songs-"O for ane and twenty, Tam," "John Barleycorn," "Last May a braw Wooer," "Rattlin roarin Willie," "O wert thou in the cauld, cauld blast," "Gude e'en to you, Kimmer," "Merry hae I been teething a Heckle," ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... slave-dealers answered. The deacon's pity veiled itself in poetic humour. "Not Angles, but Angels," he said, "with faces so angel-like! From what country come they?" "They come," said the merchants, "from Deira." "De ira!" was the untranslatable reply; "aye, plucked from God's ire, and called to Christ's mercy! And what is the name of their king?" "AElla," they told him, and Gregory seized on the words as of good omen. "Alleluia shall be ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... appealingly, and they left the room to find lunch elsewhere. Then he spoke; but, since the reproof of a friend is much too sacred and intimate a thing to be printed, and since Torpenhow used figures and metaphors which were unseemly, and contempt untranslatable, it will never be known what was actually said to Dick, who blinked and winked and picked at his hands. After a time the culprit began to feel the need of a little self-respect. He was quite sure that he had not in any way departed from virtue, and there were reasons, ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... almost untranslatable to Western ears, but Sir W. Jones, in an essay on the musical modes of the Hindoos—to be found in the third volume of the Asiatic Researches—makes an attempt to render one of their most popular ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... recognized wit or story-teller of the village gives a free entertainment which keeps the rest of the community in a convulsive state until he leaves them. However, Indian humor consists as much in the gestures and inflections of the voice as in words, and is really untranslatable. ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... and I remember being a little touched with the exquisite loveliness of one of the choruses, that sung by the "Children of Japhet" as they wander sadly away with their punishment upon them into the Waldeinsamkeit (that lovely and untranslatable word) one of the purest and ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... painter as Tomlinson acknowledges that the chance rewards which make travel worth while are seldom matters that a reader would care to hear about, for they have no substance. "They are no matter. They are untranslatable from the time and place. Such fair things cannot be taken from the magic moment. They are not ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... should be remembered that Poe intended him as a representative of the Gullah (or Gulla) dialect. "It is the negro dialect," says Joel Chandler Harris, "in its most primitive state—the 'Gullah' talk of some of the negroes on the Sea Islands being merely a confused and untranslatable mixture of English ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... their lives; but try to teach them any new tricks, and the truth of the old adage will very soon show itself. Mr. Henry Hastings had done nothing but hunt all his days, and his record would seem to have been a good deal like that of Philippus Zaehdarm in that untranslatable epitaph which may be found in "Sartor Resartus." Judged by its products, it was a very short life of a hundred useless ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... University of Wisconsin, for his literal version of the extracts from the "Deutsche Theologie," which preserve the quaintness of the original, and to Mrs. F. M. Brown, for her metrical version of Goethe's almost untranslatable lines, "Ueber allen Gipfeln, ist Ruh," which form the keynote of the beautiful harmony in the character of ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... certificate of origin was required when the big bales of English stuffs were offered to the chapman at the bridge-head of Rouen; and the perils of England were much enhanced by the entente cordiale—this expression has become technical, and therefore untranslatable—subsisting between Romane Normandy and the Northmen of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... the supplicant must give them a double quantity in return; and then he must collect together all his plough-gear and tackle, and say over them a poetic formula which has fragments that look very like the real old heathen charm. It begins with untranslatable words:— ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... the legend from various sources; but there is something quite untranslatable and perfectly beautiful in the naivete of the old Italian version. After describing the celestial music of the angels, the rejoicing of the liberated patriarchs, and the appearance of Christ, allegro, e bello e tutto lucido, it thus proceeds: ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... bondissements, bacchanale et saturnale, galop infernal, ronde du sabbat tout le tremblement," these words give a most clear, untranslatable idea of the Carnival ball. A sight more hideous can hardly strike a man's eye. I was present at one where the four thousand guests whirled screaming, reeling, roaring, out of the ball-room in the Rue St. Honore, and tore down to the column in the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was translated by Mr. James Churchill, and first appeared in "Frazer's Magazine." It is an exceedingly happy version of what has always been deemed the most untranslatable of Schiller's works. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... buffaloes, they relieved their feelings by uttering sotto voce the most virulent abuse of the tiger, its wife, and its female relations in general, and every fresh movement of the tiger drew from them some extremely powerful and untranslatable epithets. The temptation to fire at the tiger was very great, but I refrained, as every moment brought them nearer to me, and it seemed certain that the fight must come off just below the ground ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... the bright star of her time; and her whose name comes instantly to mind when we speak of the Lady of Angouleme—Marguerite de Navarre, representing both the good and the doubtful, the broadest sense of that untranslatable term ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... perceives their meaning, and yet which no study could improve or imitate. This constitutes the most striking peculiarity of the Shakspearean language, and while it justifies the almost idolatrous veneration of his countrymen, renders him, of all writers, the most untranslatable. Of all authors, Shakspeare has least imitated or repeated himself. While he gives us, in many places, portraits of the same passion, the delineations are as distinct and dissimilar as they are in nature; ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... thing is sympathy! Undefinable, untranslatable, and yet the most real thing and the greatest power in human life! How strangely our souls leap out to some other soul without our choosing or knowing the why. The man or woman who has this subtle gift of sympathy and magnetism of soul possesses the most precious thing ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... are familiar with the original, it savours of truism or platitude to say so, for in truth there can be no thoroughly satisfactory translation of "Don Quixote" into English or any other language. It is not that the Spanish idioms are so utterly unmanageable, or that the untranslatable words, numerous enough no doubt, are so superabundant, but rather that the sententious terseness to which the humour of the book owes its flavour is peculiar to Spanish, and can at best be only distantly imitated ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra |
