"Ineffably" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nearly dead with pain, turned to my Heavenly Mother, begging her from the bottom of my heart to have pity on me. Suddenly the statue seemed to come to life and grow beautiful, with a divine beauty that I shall never find words to describe. The expression of Our Lady's face was ineffably sweet, tender, and compassionate; but what touched me to the very depths of my soul was her gracious smile. Then, all my pain vanished, two big tears started to my eyes and fell ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... childish desires—desires for green grass and flowers, for gay clothes,[5] for prettily-dressed pink and lilac playfellows, for the kissing and hugging in which he had no share, for the games of the children outside the convent gate. How human, how ineffably full of a good child's longing, is not his vision of Paradise! The gaily-dressed angels are leading the little cowled monks—little baby black and white things, with pink faces like sugar lambs and Easter rabbits—into deep, deep grass quite full of ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... seen by any of the profane vulgar, was the immediate vehicle of communication with the God. She was cut off from all intercourse with the world, and was carefully trained by the attendant priests. Spending almost the whole of her time in solitude, and taught to consider her office as ineffably sacred, she saw visions, and was for the most part in a state of great excitement. The Pythia, at least of the Delphian God, was led on with much ceremony to the performance of her office, and placed upon the sacred tripod. The tripod, we are told, stood over a chasm in the ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... you deserted me?" grew to be a voluminous indictment. I could think of nothing else. There was something ineffably sad and pathetic about it. Had she been unhappy because of my beastly behaviour? Was her poor little heart sore over my incomprehensible conduct? Perhaps she had cried through sheer loneliness—But no! It would never do for me to even think of her in tears. I ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... falling lightly upon his shoulders, his eyes full of compassion, and with such majesty of face and mien that all were awed to silence ere he spoke. Stepping slowly forward toward the throng and raising his right hand from the elbow, the index finger extended upward, he said, in a voice ineffably sweet and serious: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... not to," she told him, her dark eyes ineffably beautiful with their luster of tears. "I don't see why I should try—why I should try to do anything you ask me ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... in, I can look forward with perfect equanimity to being snowed up for any time Providence thinks proper; and to go into the garden in its snowed-up state is like going into a bath of purity. The first breath on opening the door is so ineffably pure that it makes me gasp, and I feel a black and sinful object in the midst of all the spotlessness. Yesterday I sat out of doors near the sun-dial the whole afternoon, with the thermometer so many degrees below freezing that it will be weeks finding its way up ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... adventures, satirising German ways, but to some extent perhaps inspired by German literature. Very commonly Pigault falls into a sort of burlesque melodramatic style, with frequent interludes of horse-play, resembling that of the ineffably dreary persons who knock each others' hats off on the music-hall stage. There is even something dreamlike about him, though of a very low order of dream; he has at any rate the dream-habit of constantly attempting something and finding that he ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... of the creed has been, with great pains, extracted. The student who is desirous of knowing more is referred to the works in question; he will find enough in every leaf to make his blood curdle with shame and horror: but the purity of these pages shall not be soiled by any thing so ineffably humiliating and disgusting as a complete exposition of them; what is here culled will be a sufficient sample of the popular belief, and the reader would but lose time who should seek in the writings of the demonologists for more ample details. He will gain nothing by lifting ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... he now directed on the girl's despairing countenance. Years of good thoughts, an existence of tender cares, an eternity of youthful devotion spoke in that rapt, momentary, eloquent gaze, and imprinted on his expression a character ineffably beautiful and calm—a nobleness above the human, and ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... of love, so far from being tainted with finitude, like knowledge; so far from being mere man's, or a temporary and deceptive power given to man for temporary uses, by a Creator who has another ineffably higher way of loving, as He has of truth, is itself divine. In contrast with the activity of love, Omnipotence itself dwindles into insignificance, and creation sinks into a puny exercise of power. Love, in a word, is the highest good; and, as such, it has all its worth in itself, and gives to all ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... their speed. His spirit was high; more than one altar was richer of his vows; the Roman genius was still president. On the three pillars only six hundred feet away were fame, increase of fortune, promotions, and a triumph ineffably sweetened by hate, all in store for him! That moment Malluch, in the gallery, saw Ben-Hur lean forward over his Arabs, and give them the reins. Out flew the many-folded lash in his hand; over the backs of the startled steeds it ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... lilac-coloured cloud, touched with gold by the risen sun. He could guess the rest. A perfect morning!—clean and crisp, with the sea a translucent blue, and sunlight glittering on the Island beaches; the air still, yet bracing, and withal ineffably pure—a morning mysterious with the sense of autumn, but of autumn rarified by its passage over the salt strait, deodorised, made pure of marsh ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... not Mrs. Alsager, she was not any woman he had seen upon earth, nor was it any masquerade of friendship or of penitence. Yet she was more familiar to him than the women he had known best, and she was ineffably beautiful and consoling. She filled the poor room with her presence, the effect of which was as soothing as some odour of incense. She was as quiet as an affectionate sister, and there was no surprise in her being there. Nothing more ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... tone in which she had said these four words seemed to him the very breath of nature, and his only answer could be to take her hand and hold it a moment. Then he raised it to his lips. She submitted, still with her pure, trusting smile, in which there was something ineffably passive. She liked him—she had liked him all the while; now anything might happen! She was ready—she had been ready always, waiting for him to speak. If he had not spoken she would have waited for ever; but when the word came she dropped like the peach from the shaken tree. Rosier ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... pursed up his lips, and looked ineffably wise, a way he had when he knew very little about ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... pace as she recognized the old man, and nestling to his side as she glanced wistfully towards myself. A winning, candid, lovable child's face, somewhat melancholy, somewhat more thoughtful than is common to the face of childhood, but calm, intelligent, and ineffably mild. Presently she stole from the old man, and put ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the stench had been to some extent ameliorated by the fresh air that immediately poured down into the densely-packed hold. What the relief of that whiff of fresh air must have been to the unhappy blacks can only be faintly imagined; but that it was ineffably grateful to them was evidenced by the deep murmur of delight, and the loud, long-drawn inspiration of the breath that swept from end to end of the hold the moment that the hatch was withdrawn, as well as by the upward glance of gratitude that instantly greeted us from the upturned ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... scenes of the most extraordinary character and the most touching pathos, and utter moral truth in the most exquisite fictions in which such truth was ever embodied; and that again they succeeded; that so ineffably rich in genius were these obscure wretches, that no less than four of them were found equal to this intellectual achievement; and while each has told many events, and given many traits which the others have omitted, ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... did myself. And all of a sudden he repeated some verses of Alfred de Musset. I felt myself choking, seized with indescribable emotion. It seemed to me that the mountains themselves, the lake, the moonlight, were singing to me about things ineffably sweet. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... so ineffably tender, that to the lover's soul it had the effect of a rose leaf falling into a full cup of water. His passion brimmed over. His lips trembled under a confused torrent of words which rose to them but which he could not express. He had the violent and divine sensation ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... had been hurt by his fall, to which the man replied: "No, the fall didn't hurt me a bit, it was stoppin' so quick that did all the mischief!" The humour of the story was not very brilliant, yet somehow it seemed to Escombe at that moment to be ineffably amusing, and he laughed aloud at the quaintness of the conceit. And, as he did so, the remaining yarns of the second strand parted with a little jerk that thrilled him through and through, and he hung there suspended by a single strand, but ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... white had listened to her quiet talk, for you could nowhere have found a nature more readily sensitive than his to all the beauty and wonder which life, as if it were haphazardly, produces every day. He pitied this betrayed child quite ineffably, because in her ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... water-venders, the baskets of those that sold oranges of Palermo and black cherries of Padua, had vanished from the base of the church of St. Mark, which with its dim splendor of mosaics and its carven luxury of pillar and arch and finial rose like the high-altar, ineffably rich and beautiful, of the vaster temple whose inclosure it completed. Before it stood the three great red flag-staffs, like painted tapers before an altar, and from them hung the Austrian flags of red and ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... man made no answer as his hand grew like rock about his son's. A smile ineffably sweet touched his lips and shone in his eyes. The years had been hard, merciless years to him as they had been to David Drennen. But for a moment the past was forgotten, this brief fragment of time standing supreme in the two lives. At last, in the silence, there fell upon them that little awkwardness ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... passing as he did, and eye the ground: but, once in the pulpit, his figure rose and swelled majestically, and seemed to fly over them all like a guardian angel's; his sallow cheek burned, his great Italian eye shot black lightning at the impenitent, and melted ineffably ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... oh how joyful it was to be once more in the deep woods of Aescendune, to hear the sweet song of the birds, and to fear no evil! Sweet, ineffably sweet were those days ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... her "vaulting ambition" by a very creditable spring over the parallel bars, to "toss the air into perfume," we are not prepared to deny, having no very clear notion of the meaning of those remarkable words; but when, we are told that Mrs. Eastman was "ineffably surprised, yet more ineffably amused," we must be allowed to enter an energetic protest. Harrington himself is perhaps a trifle too "regnant" to be altogether satisfactory; and there are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... love and truth! I at last fold thee in my arms! I at last can call thee mine! No jealous brother shall thwart our happiness again; fortune hath at length recompensed me for all my sufferings, and enabled me to do justice to my love." The dear creature smiled ineffably charmingly, and, with a look of bewitching tenderness, said, "and shall we never part again?" "Never," I replied, "thou wondrous pattern of all earthly perfection! never, until death shall divide us! By this ambrosial kiss, a thousand times more fragrant than the breeze that ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... action. He cannot interchange courtesies with the magnates of the city, and thus places himself and the interests of his country, so far as that often potent means of influence goes, at a great disadvantage. A pompous commodore brings an American squadron into port, and is ineffably disgusted at finding his consul utterly unable to do the honors or in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... to protect the honor of God, they were both absurd and blasphemous. There is something ineffably ludicrous in the spectacle of a host of fat aldermen rushing out from their shops and offices to steady the tottering throne of Omnipotence. And what presumption on the part of these pigmies to undertake a defence of deity! Surely Omnipotence ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... about his princess, who was the embodiment of all the virtues of the unknown goddess of his fancy. She was proud yet humble, aloof yet compassionate, and above all ineffably beautiful. And as for ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... why probe into? Enough: display, Make demonstrable, how, by night as day, Earth's centre and sky's outspan, all's informed Equally by Sun's efflux!—source from whence If just one spark I drew, full evidence Were mine of fire ineffably enthroned— Sun's self made palpable ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... call empty noise, and was therefore specially and peculiarly heavy, there was something amusing to lovers of contrast in that between the stormy heartiness of my reception at most of these meetings, and the ineffably dry orations which I delivered to them—between cheers of joy when I rose and cheers of relief ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... spaces of silence, and so heal them quickly of their wounds, like the sage little animals that slip away from combat, to cure their hurt with leaves. Presently, a great sense of rest enfolded her, a rest ineffably precious because it was so soon to be over. It was like great riches lent only for a time. Outside this familiar quiet was the world, thrilled by a terrifying life pressing upon her and calling. She longed to put her hands ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... her life a tragedy. The realization of the terrible truth staggered me. Such a perfect face as hers I had never before set eyes upon, so beautiful, so clear-cut, so refined, so eminently the countenance of one well-born, and yet so ineffably sad, so ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... its tail. She begged Chopin, her little pet pianist, to set the tail to music. He did so, and behold the world is richer for this piece. I do not dispute the story. It seems well grounded, but then it is so ineffably silly! The three valses of this op. 64 were published September, 1847, and are respectively dedicated to the Comtesse Delphine Potocka, the Baronne Nathaniel de Rothschild ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... had come about that before Ida had been in the house a week it was no longer as a mystery, or, at least, as an awe-inspiring mystery, but as an ineffably dear and precious reality, that her presence was felt. Had a stranger chanced to come there on a visit, at that time, he would doubtless have been struck with the fact that a young girl was the central figure of the household, around whom its other members ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... popular idea of future Retribution) I have tried to reason out a doctrine of Future Life from spiritual considerations. I have no doubt that my critic would find them highly aboard, and perhaps would pronounce them ineffably ludicrous, and preposterous feats of logic. If I could hide their existence from him, I certainly would, lest he misquote and misinterpret them. But as I cannot keep the book from him, I here refer to it to say, that if I am to maintain this most profound and mysterious doctrine with any practical ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman |
