"Inexplicable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sleep, are merely salutary precautions for maintaining the men in health and strength to do their work, it is obvious that the observance of these abstinences or taboos after the work is done, that is, when the game is killed and the fish caught, must be wholly superfluous, absurd, and inexplicable. But as I shall now show, these taboos often continue to be enforced or even increased in stringency after the death of the animals, in other words, after the hunter or fisher has accomplished his object by making his bag or landing his fish. The rationalistic ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... repressed opinion on politics, and all the sentiments of the English gentleman, at a small expense of vital energy. Also, he may be obstinate or persistent at the same low rate, and may even show sudden impulses which have a false air of daemonic strength because they seem inexplicable, though perhaps their secret lies merely in the want of regulated channels for the soul to move in—good and sufficient ducts of habit without which our nature easily turns to mere ooze and mud, and at any pressure yields nothing but a spurt or ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... entire species. These conditions will also determine the population of a species; and by a careful consideration of all the circumstances we may be enabled to comprehend, and in some degree to explain, what at first sight appears so inexplicable—the excessive abundance of some species, while others closely allied to ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... by-contract, like any poor-house proposal for 'clods' and 'stickings' of beef, to low undertakers, such as Broome and Fenton. Considering the ample fortune which Pope drew from the whole work, we have often been struck by the inexplicable indulgence with which this scandalous partition is treated by Pope's biographers. It is simply the lowest act of self- degradation ever ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... of the Messiah's lowliness, contains, in addition, a special designation of it which is found again in the nomen and omen of his native place. This appears especially from the circumstance that, if it were otherwise, the quotation: in [Greek: hoti Nazoraios klethestai], would be inexplicable, since it is very forced to suppose that "Nazarene" here designates generally one low and despised.[2] But he chose the general formula of [Pg 112] quotation (comp. Gersdorf, Beitraege zur Sprachcharacteristik 1. S. 136), in order thereby to intimate that in ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... instant believe in the coarse interpretation which others might have given to the elopement; had that been possible, the keenest of her pain might have been dulled by contempt. No, no! The worst that she thought was that Harrington, for some inexplicable reason, had withdrawn Lina from her home to marry her in private; but this was enough. It had broken up that confidence, unexpressed, but always a holy principle in both, which had so long held those two souls together, spite of everything that ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... in the ethics of Madigan warfare to explain the inexplicable. Florence was on her feet, flying as though for her very life, before Split, shaken down from her dreams, quite realized what had happened. And she was still sitting as she had fallen when Jim, the Indian, ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... commiserate them profoundly for living in a place they are so anxious to leave. A lovely girl of Madrid once said to me she never wished to travel,—some people who had been to France preferred Paris to Madrid; as if that were an inexplicable insanity by which their wanderings had been punished. The indolent incuriousness of the Spaniard accepts the utter isolation of his city as rather an advantage. It saves him the trouble of making up his mind where to go. Vamonos al Prado! or, ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... of the water almost immediately tore him free again. And still that awful, implacable downward drag continued, until he began to wonder dreamily whether he would ever return to the surface alive, or whether, after all, deliverance from his wretchedness—which in some inexplicable way already seemed much less poignant to him—was coming to him down there in those black depths. The pressure upon his body was rapidly becoming unendurable; the air was being forced from his lungs; he was suffocating! Involuntarily he began to struggle, throwing out his arms ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... complain of Monsieur de Maulincour, who had given some ground for it during his former intimacy with Monsieur de Ronquerolles' sister, the Comtesse de Serizy. That lady, the one who detested German sentimentality, was all the more exacting in the matter of prudery. By one of those inexplicable fatalities, Auguste now uttered a harmless jest which Madame de Serizy took amiss, and her brother resented it. The discussion took place in the corner of a room, in a low voice. In good society, adversaries never raise ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... the old Sault au Matelot, with his hands in his pockets, and steadfastly staring at them. He did not relax the severity of his gaze when they returned to join him, and appeared to find little consolation in Kitty's "O Dick, I forgot all about you," given with a sudden, inexplicable laugh, interrupted and renewed as some ludicrous image seemed to come and go in ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... converted. He was born into a new life that was as real to him as his consciousness was real. This psychological change will be understood by some of my readers; others may regard it as they do any other inexplicable phenomenon in that mysterious inner world of the human soul, in which are lived the real lives of us all. In Ah Lee's heathen soul was wrought the gracious wonder that makes joy among ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... thorough idealism as Berkeley's, inasmuch as it equally, perhaps in a more perfect degree, removes all reality and immediateness of perception, and places us in a dream-world of phantoms and spectres, the inexplicable swarm and equivocal generation of motions in our own brains.—3. That this hypothesis neither involves the explanation, nor precludes the necessity, of a mechanism and co-adequate forces in the percipient, which at the more than magic touch of the impulse ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... murder, he opened the papers and read that the woman whom he had left for dead with her brain pierced by a hat-pin, had been found on that same floor crushed under a fallen cabinet; and what explanation he was ever able to make to himself for a fact so inexplicable. ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... gallant garrison was now reduced by famine, disease, and war increased the earnest desire of officers and men to engage the enemy and, even at the greatest price, to break his lines. In spite of the various inexplicable features which the actions of Colenso and Spion Kop presented, the confidence of the army in Sir Redvers Buller was still firm, and the knowledge that he himself would personally direct the operations, instead of leaving their conduct ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... gone off into that state, hours and hours, on account of Matthew's strange and inexplicable conduct, and nobody has ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Carlshoff is laid down by Arrowsmith in lat. 15 deg. 45' S. as in the text, and long. 145 deg. 28' W. The first meridian used for the longitude in the text is quite inexplicable, and was probably assumed on very erroneous computation. It is 190 marine leagues due west ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... Whether his visit to the old mansion had been somehow discovered or suspected, or whether she was removed by some preconcerted or antecedent plan, he could not conjecture.—Still, the situation in which he found the mansion the night he went to convey her away, left an inexplicable impression on his mind. He could in no manner account how the candle could be placed at the window according to agreement, unless it had been done by herself; and if so, how had she ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... or any lower motive, which may induce the literary character to hold an unwearied pen. Another equally powerful exists, which must remain inexplicable to him who knows not to escape from the listlessness of life—it is the passion for literary occupation. He whose eye can only measure the space occupied by the voluminous labours of the elder Pliny, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... felt emphatically by the very greatest dramatists; and this fact offers, of course, an explanation of the otherwise inexplicable negligence of such authors as Shakespeare and Moliere in the matter of publishing their plays. These supreme playwrights wanted people to see their pieces in the theatre rather than to read them in the closet. In his own lifetime, Shakespeare, who was very scrupulous about the ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... two essences so diverse, who was walking alone toward his dwelling, through the night and the rain, began again in the depth of his double being to feel the anxiety of inexplicable reminiscences. ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... practical matter, his best bet was probably to investigate the nine inexplicable ships overhead. They hadn't co-operated with the Waldenians. It could be inferred that no confidential relationship existed up there. It was possible that the nine ships and the Waldenians didn't even know of each other's presence. There is a lot ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... the support of his ecclesiastical superiors, Mark, who possessed more humility than is usual at twenty-one, did not fancy that he should be successful. The ambition to become a friar was revived by an incomprehensible, or if not incomprehensible, certainly by an inexplicable impulse to put himself in tune with the landscape, to proclaim as it were on behalf of that dumb heart of England beating down there in the flowery Vale of Wield: God rest you merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay! There was revealed ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... fliers on the market gave him enough surplus to send his sister Mary through the high school of his country home in New Hampshire, and afterward through Wellesley College; although just why a woman should want to go through college was inexplicable to John Taylor, and he was still uncertain as to the wisdom ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... years of his life my father's health perceptibly grew worse. Several times he had the most sudden and inexplicable sort of fainting fits, from which he used to recover the next day, but completely lost his memory ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... next would have appeared unbelievable to any who have not over and over watched the inexplicable happenings of a gaming table. Kendric made his second throw and lifted his eyebrows quizzically at the result. He had turned out the deuce, the lowest number possible. A little eagerly, while men began to mutter in their excitement, Rios snatched up cup and die and threw. Once already he ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... Callahan; and when the train-master was gone, he ordered Shovel to oil around while he did two or three things which, to an initiated onlooker, might have seemed fairly inexplicable. First he disconnected the air-hose between the car and the engine, tying the ends up with a stout cord so that the connection would not seem to be broken. Next he crawled under the Naught-seven and deliberately ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... so unusual and inexplicable in all this, Mr. Powis, that it strikes me you have been to blame, in not inquiring more closely into the circumstances than, by your own account I should think had ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... now look back to the result of former lectures. It was this: After we had explained everything in the growth of language that can be explained, there remained in the end, as the only inexplicable residuum, what we called roots. These roots formed the constituent elements of all languages.... ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... because they were not suitable to any thing of which they had a knowledge; they believed that incomprehensible beings must have inconceivable qualities. These were the materials of which theology availed itself to compose those inexplicable shadows before which they commanded the human race to bend ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... signs, in the inexplicable shrinking of capital to its hiding places, and in the universal darkening of business, it would seem that all might have discovered the approach of that storm which has since burst with such fury upon the land. But this was not the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... paradise. And ever and anon came on the still air the soft eternal pulsations of the distant sea, sound mournfulest, most mysterious, of all the harpings of Nature. It was the sea,—the deep, eternal sea,—the treacherous, soft, dreadful, inexplicable sea; and he was perhaps at this moment being borne away on it,—away, away,—to what sorrows, to what temptations, to what dangers, she knew not. She looked along the old, familiar, beaten path by which he came, by which he went, and thought, "What if he never should come ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... on the other hand, I found from the beginning until very recently that the so-called intellectuals exhibited a curious and almost inexplicable reticence in supporting Birth Control. They even hesitated to voice any public protest against the campaign to crush us which was inaugurated and sustained by the most reactionary and sinister forces in American life. It was not inertia or any lack of interest on the part of the masses that stood ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... was so astonished that she could make no answer, and let this queen of beauty depart, and believed her to be a fairy, until a workman told her that the fairy was Madame de l'Ile Adam. Although the adventure was inexplicable, she told her father that she would not give her consent to the proposed marriage until after the autumn, so much is it in the nature of Love to ally itself with Hope, in spite of the bitter pills which this ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... some inexplicable disquietude from the situation in which his master lay, he set off at a pace which soon brought him to the house, where he scratched with great violence at the door for immediate admittance. This obtained, the parents were in the utmost alarm and consternation at his appearance, especially ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... the Author is disposed to express his suspicion that the entire story of the tripartite league is the creature only of invention, originating in some inexplicable mistake, or fabricated for the purpose of exciting feelings of contempt ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... exceeding cruel crying was nothing else but the conflict between the love of the woman which went out to her earthly lover, and would fain make him happy, and the nature of the inhabitant of heaven, where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. This was the key to her inexplicable sorrow during the past weeks. This explained why, though she loved him so tenderly, the thought of becoming his wife ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... her to leave the immortal world of fairies in order to share the fate of her earthly lover, as his wife. In a moment of deepest despair about the state of his country, the fairy queen appears to him and purposely destroys his faith in her by deeds of the most cruel and inexplicable nature. Driven mad by a thousand fears, Arindal begins to imagine that all the time he has been dealing with a wicked sorceress, and tries to escape the fatal spell by pronouncing a curse upon Ada. Wild with sorrow, the unhappy fairy ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... exercised the conjectural ingenuity of critics; and, as we are always loth to suppose that the cause of defective apprehension is in ourselves, the mystery has been too commonly explained by the very easy process of setting it down as in fact inexplicable, and by resolving the phenomenon into a misgrowth or lusus of the capricious and irregular genius of Shakespeare. The shallow and stupid arrogance of these vulgar and indolent decisions I would ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... In The Blue Dryad the cat is exhibited in his useful capacity as a killer of vermin. A Psychical Invasion is a successful attempt to exploit the undoubted occult powers of the cat. Poe's famous tale paints puss as an avenger of wrongs. In Zut the often inexplicable desire of the cat to change his home has a charming setting. Booth Tarkington in Gipsy has made a brilliant study of a wild city cat, living his own independent life with no apparent means of support. I should state that the ending of the story, which is ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... impressed him, and now it came upon him heavily. The shrilling of a solitary locust somewhere in the gums, the brisk crackle of dry bark and twigs as he trod, the melancholy sighing of the wind-stirred leafage, offered him those inexplicable contrasts that ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... the court where licentiousness in either sex had long been the surest road to royal favor. She began by making a regulation, that she would receive no lady who was separated from her husband; and she abolished a senseless and inexplicable rule of etiquette which had hitherto prohibited the queen and princesses from dining or supping in company with their husbands.[9] Such an exclusion from the king's table of those who were its most ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... conventional life. He ran over the incidents of the cruise—Kitchell, the turtle hunt, the finding of the derelict, the dead captain, the squall, and the awful sight of the sinking bark, Moran at the wheel, the grewsome business of the shark-fishing, and last of all that inexplicable lifting and quivering of the schooner. He told himself that now he would probably never know the explanation of ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... ambition, has allured, as you are aware, more than one youthful fowler to an uncertain swampy hunting ground, called "politics." Mr. Frechette was one of the unfortunate. This game preserve, I pronounce "uncertain" because owing to several inexplicable eventualities sportsmen innumerable, therefrom return empty handed, whilst others, Mr. Chairman, make up, we know, pretty good bags. The Son of Apollo, whilst thus hunting one gruesome, windy morning, fortunately for us, sank in a boggy, yielding quicksand. Luckily he extricated himself in time, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... full expression of the infinite beyond. He cannot derive any moral strength or comfort from the world about him because he conceives that world to be an implacable instrument of a god's uncertain, inexplicable will. He therefore cosmically projects, in a frenzy of despair, his crying human demand. And out of the wastes of space there arises for him a ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... with much surprise, with some slight sense of annoyance; she had bent far in tendering her influence at the French court to a private soldier, and his rejection of it seemed as ungracious as it was inexplicable. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Willie, a bright and promising boy, to whom his father was devotedly attached. "This," says Dr. J.G. Holland, "was a new burden; and the visitation which, in his firm faith in Providence, he regarded as providential, was also inexplicable. Why should he, with so many burdens upon him, and with such necessity for solace in his home and his affections, be brought into so tender a trial? It was to him a trial of faith, indeed. A Christian lady of Massachusetts, who was officiating as nurse in one of the hospitals, came in ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... not explain it, but as the girl emerged from the curtains, a strange, confused memory of something and somebody she had known in the past came over her. But when the girl spoke, a more inexplicable sensation took possession of the listener, for her voice was the feminine of Preston Cheney's masculine tones, and then as she looked at the girl again the haunting memories of the first glance were explained, for she was very like Preston Cheney as the Baroness remembered him when ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... occasionally squinted along the massive iron tube over which he was placed in command; nor was that familiar and paternal care, which distinguishes the seaman's interest in his particular trust, wanting in his manner. Still, an air of broad and inexplicable surprise had possession of his rugged lineaments; and ever, as his look wandered from the countenance of Wilder to their adversary, it was not difficult to discover that he marvelled to find the two in opposition. ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... The elucidation of this inexplicable phenomenon was reserved for Christian Huygens, who, with an improved telescope of his own construction, was able to declare that Saturn's appendages were portions of a ring which surrounds the planet, and is ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... discontent or cheerlessness should be regarded as occasioned by an accession of the attribute of Passion into the mind. Whatever state, as regards either the body or the mind, exists with error or heedlessness, should be known as indicative of Darkness which is incomprehensible and inexplicable. The organ of hearing rests on space; it is space itself (under limitations); (Sound has that organ for its refuge). (Sound, therefore, is a modification of space). In perceiving sound, one may not immediately acquire a knowledge of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... between the sublime and the commonplace, none between zenith and nadir. Hence, appreciation is inevitable in every course of study, whether the authorities have the courage to proclaim it or not. Just why it has not been written into the course of study is inexplicable, seeing that it is fundamental in the educational process. It is far from clear why the superintendent permits teachers and pupils to go on their way year after year thinking that arithmetic is their final destination, ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... little, little boy! you will forgive me if what I write hurts you, won't you?) I awoke suddenly, and it seemed that everything was clear to me. I recalled your story of loving the woman whom you didn't think it right for you to marry, of your inexplicable stay at Ravenel through an entire summer, your depression afterward, and your sudden plunge into business. I couldn't help putting these things together and believing that this little Irish girl was the ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... to the woman living in the miasma of perfume and secret fear. He heard again her wistful voice pronounce the names of far places, of Tarragona and Seriphos, investing them with the accent of an intense hopeless desire. He thought of the inexplicable place of her birth and of the riven, unsubstantial figure of the man with the blood pulsing into his ocherous face. Some old, profound error or calamity had laid its blight upon him, he was certain; but the most lamentable ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... fingerprint against that when you board the ship. Skylift isn't till dawn, but you can go aboard as soon as the process crew finishes with her." He glanced at the monitor screen, where the swarming crew were still doing inexplicable things to the immobile spacecraft. "It will be another hour or two. Where are you ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... her in a manner which appears inexplicable, she seeks and finds excuses for him. She is so innocent that not only she cannot believe herself suspected, but she cannot conceive the existence ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... inhabited city being slightly warmer—i. e., thinner—than the atmosphere of the surrounding country, a plane drops a little on entering the rarefied area, precisely as a ship sinks a little in fresh water. Hence the phenomena of "jolt" and your "inexplicable collisions" with factory chimneys. In air, as on earth, it ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... there is nothing that is not expressive—not a curl of the hair, not a lift of the eyebrows, not a trick of speech or gait. The body becomes, as it were, transparent and pervious to the soul; and that inexplicable element of sense, which baffles us everywhere else, seems here at last to receive its explanation in presenting itself as the perfect ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... overcome by the bitter memory of the past, and I wanted no formal application now to give me the clue to her strange preference for the accident ward and her hitherto inexplicable fondness for "railway cases." Poor thing, with what inexpressible vividness must the circumstances in which this New Year's night was passing with her have recalled the sad remembrances of that other New Year's night the narrative of which she had just given me! Presently she recovered ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... sir; you think all these inexplicable terms are connected with Sir Wycherly's religious feelings. You may certainly be right, for it exceeds my knowledge to connect them with any thing else. I wish, notwithstanding, he had not disowned this noble young lieutenant of ours! Is ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... delicate matter for a girl brought up in Roberta Holland's school. Several times after the restaurant encounter she essayed it; trying both the indirect approach and the method of extreme frankness. Neither answered. Julien responded to her advances by alternate moods of extreme gloom and slyly inexplicable amusement. Bobbie gave it up, concluding that he was in a very queer mood, anyway. She was ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... marvellous glow of a deep violet color shot over the whole room, and the two men turned and faced each other both with inquiry in their looks, so unexpected was this theatrical effect to the one, and so inexplicable its cause and ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... inexplicable. There was really the smell of meat. I had also that peculiar sensation of fulness which is apt to succeed a dinner, and a dish well filled with bones was in plain view. I took up one of the latter, in order to ascertain its genus. The captain kindly informed me that ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... fashion of a lover, he soon forgot that it was he who was too soon, and he chafed and chafed as the minutes passed, until at about quarter to one he was striding gloomily about with despondent features and melancholy forebodings, imagining a thousand miserable reasons for her inexplicable delay. A good many people stared at him as they passed, and we may ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... and pushed the whole load back up the tunnel, his thoughts running in unhappy circles. A dead robot was a terrible thing, and one of his family too. But there was something wrong about this robot, something that was quite inexplicable, the number on the plate had been "17," yet he remembered only too well the day that a water-shorted motor had killed Venex 17 in ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison
... abstruse, inexplicable, recondite, cabalistic, inscrutable, secret, dark, mystic, transcendental, enigmatical, mystical, unfathomable, hidden, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... the Manichee or Gnostic idolatry?" Account of the Temple Church by R. W. Billings, p. 5 London. 1838. This is, at all events, a curious coincidence, especially considered in connection with the extensive dissemination of the Paulician opinions among the common people of Europe. At any rate, in so inexplicable a matter, we are inclined to catch at any explanation, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... the soldiers were stalking the renegades, the commissioner of Indian affairs sent out to stalk the soldiers. Investigation as to the cause of this inexplicable outbreak was demanded. Those very chiefs had left the capital in unbounded good humor not two months before, and who was responsible for this sudden and baleful change of heart? It was a matter soon and easily settled. In ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... went on: "Blood will tell. All this accounts for the peculiar, inexplicable attraction that Kathleen has held for me. It is like a chapter out of ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... enigma," whispered Caroline in her ear. "What queer discoveries I make day by day now!—I who thought I had your confidence. Inexplicable creature! even ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... talking to Garnet, who was on her other side, but the indifference was only put on from pride. An inexplicable penetrating sadness fell upon her soul, and took complete possession of her without leaving her power to ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... discussion has, therefore, great significance for our view of the vital processes in the plant; it proves beyond doubt that these processes are in no way of a purely mechanical nature, but that there is something underlying all this, a hitherto inexplicable something, which we call "life." In all vital activities, physical and chemical processes certainly do occur; they do not, however, take place spontaneously but are made use of by the vital element ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... Richard Royson associated with Westmoreland ever since Coeur-de-Lion returned from Palestine. That is the kind of family asset a boy will brag of. Joined to a certain proficiency in games, it supplies a ready- made nickname. But the wonderful and wholly inexplicable thing is that while I have been standing here, watching our head-light dancing over the desert, the fantastic conceit has invaded my very soul that I share with my kingly ancestor his love of this land, his ambition to accomplish great deeds ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... too not better understood in the one case than in the other, namely, by generation and birth. There remains, therefore, only the redemptive act itself, and this is transcendant, ineffable, and 'a fortiori', therefore, inexplicable. Like the act of primal apostasy, it is in its own nature a mystery, known only through faith in ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... into the marsh. Looking in the direction whence the sounds came, she saw indistinct and vague against the night sky, an enormous rounded thing rise in the air and descend, whereupon was borne to her another of the strange crashings. These inexplicable sounds and the inexplicable sight would have frightened Miss Sullivan had she not the resources with which modern science fortifies the mind against credulity and superstition. The round object, she told herself, was some sudden puff of smoke on a railway track far beyond; the crashing was the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... all. The play-bills show us that after a tragedy there generally comes a farce: the case was reversed with them, for they had enjoyed their farce, and had laughed over it heartily—and now there was danger of its ending in a tragedy. When their preparations were nearly complete for a sudden and inexplicable disappearance, our astrologers were horrified by the apparition, in the day time, of stars they had never consulted—stars of this gross, lower world—stars which, in case of resistance, become shooting stars, and which revolve, in very eccentric orbits, around the central police station. ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... given agent—a chemical solution or an electric current—is profoundly modified by the dose a given intensity, producing one effect and a different intensity giving rise to an effect diametrically opposite. This is the reason of the inexplicable anomalies which have baffled many investigators. Numerous are the forces which act on growth some helping, others retarding, the effects being further modified by the strength and duration of application. These ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... to myself for this knowledge, or feeling. I felt that it was more than intuition. I felt that it was experience, not the experience of sight or hearing or any of the senses, but experience nevertheless—subconscious, if you wish to call it so in these days. Though the experience was inexplicable, it was none the less valid. I wondered at myself for thinking this, yet I did not doubt. There are many avenues to the soul. To know that a man is alive, seeing him walk is not essential, nor hearing ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... books, Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms, To great Laplace, from Saunderson and Sims, 95 Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray Of figures,—disentangle them who may. Baron de Tott's Memoirs beside them lie, And some odd volumes of old chemistry. Near those a most inexplicable thing, 100 With lead in the middle—I'm conjecturing How to make Henry understand; but no— I'll leave, as Spenser says, with many mo, This secret in the pregnant womb of time, Too vast a matter for so weak ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... D'Alcano (sic), or that The Bothie of Toper-na-Fuosich (sic) is not the title of Clough's boisterous epic, or that Dante and his Cycle (sic) is not the name Rossetti gave to his collection of translations; and why Troy Town should appear in the index as Tory Town is really quite inexplicable, unless it is intended as a compliment to Mr. Hall Caine who once dedicated, or rather tried to dedicate, to Rossetti a lecture on the relations of poets to politics. We are sorry, too, to find an English dramatic critic misquoting ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... allowed details of the affair to be published in the evening papers, including what purported to be a translation of a note dropped by the German, saying: "The German army is at the gates of Paris. Nothing remains for you but to surrender.—Lieutenant von Heidssen." This is an example of the inexplicable working of the censorship. The people tonight all seemed to believe that the ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... inexplicable sounds with increasing alarm until the sonorous clock from somewhere outside boomed 'one,' when, quite unaccountably, he fell asleep, awaking on the stroke of two ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... was solved! the inexplicable longings of his soul, which had so often perplexed him, were at length explained. The want, the indefinable want, which he had so constantly experienced, was at last supplied; the grand object on which to bring ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... or no imagination to exercise, and he only tolerates a performance in the theatre when little or no demand is made on the exercise of the imaginative faculty. "The groundlings," said Shakespeare for all time, "are capable of [appreciating] nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise." They would be hugely delighted nowadays with a scene in which two real motor cars, with genuine chauffeurs and passengers, raced uproariously across the stage. That is realism in its nakedness. That ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... remains to be seen whether this whole affair is not a most unworthy fraud. The circumstances are inexplicable - I had almost said incredible; and until I see a little more daylight, and some plausible motive, I confess I should be very sorry to put a hand to the transaction. I appeal to you in this difficulty for information. I must learn what is at ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... left to himself, was rather inexplicable. He opened the closet, counted the teaspoons, weighed the sugar-tongs, closely inspected a silver milk-pot to ascertain that it was of the genuine metal, and, having satisfied his curiosity on these points, put on his cocked hat corner-wise, and danced with much gravity ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... horrible invisible spirit was following us from this scene of terror. "The devils of disease?" "The pictures of horror and misery?" "The souls of men who have been sacrificed on the altar of darkness of Mongolia?" An inexplicable fear penetrated into our consciousness from whose grasp we could not release ourselves. Only when we had turned from the road, passed over a timbered ridge into a bowl in the mountains from which we could see neither Jahantsi Kure, the dugun nor ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... came over her to shock and repulse that inexplicable thing in him which set him apart from her and made him one with the world in which those others moved; that stout gentleman and the young lady who had called him Jimmie. She ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... must be attended to, so advance carefully towards him through a plantation of young coffee, apologising humbly for intruding on his domain. He smiles and bows beautifully, but—horror!—he knows no English, I no French. Situation tres inexplicable et tres interessante, as I subsequently heard him remark; and the worst of it is he is evidently bursting to know who I am, and what I am doing in the middle of his coffee plantation, for his it clearly is, as ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... but—" said Loretz, afraid to hear what was coming; not that he guessed, but because Spener sat there with a face so—so inexplicable. Loretz could not make out its meaning when just now he glanced that way; and the face was full of meaning. What was passing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... thousand dollars life was at best a hard struggle in the State, and I imagine there was less surprise at the sacrifice of the place than at the fact that your grandfather should have been able to put down the ready money. The making of a fortune is always, I suppose, more inexplicable than the losing of one. The Blakes had always been accounted people of great wealth and wastefulness, but within five years from the close of the war they had sunk to the position in which you find them now —a change, I dare say, from which it is natural much lingering bitterness should result. ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... was deceiving her. He had some sinister motive in thus endeavouring to plant seeds of suspicion within her mind. It was plain that he was endeavouring in some way to secure his own ends. Those ends, however, were a complete and inexplicable mystery. ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... boldly skirted the cabin and dropped into the race-way at its side. Following it a few hundred yards he came upon a long disused shaft opening into it, which had been covered with a rough trap of old planks, as if to protect incautious wayfarers from falling in. Here a sudden and inexplicable fear overtook Johnny, and he ran away. When he reached the hotel, almost the first sight that met his astounded eyes was the spectacle of the paragon, apparently still in undisturbed possession of all his perfections—driving coolly off in a buggy ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... mothers thought, and as their daughters will think, expressing the thoughts of the countless generations behind and in front of them. But this woman was moved merely by impulses; and what is more inexplicable than an impulse? What is the spring but an impulse? and this woman was mysterious, evanescent as its breath, with the same irresponsible seduction. He was certain that she was at last clear to him, though she might become dark to him again. ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... and the powerful restorative did its work upon the boy, he began to understand that this was no vision, and that something utterly inexplicable had befallen him, whether for weal or woe his confused senses would not tell him. He heard as in a dream the hurried explanations of the boys, drawing his brows together in the effort to understand. But when they spoke of flight he shook his head, and pointed to the door ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... his youth by inexplicable aversions, by shudderings which chilled his spine and made him grit his teeth, as, for example, when he saw a girl wringing wet linen. These reactions had long persisted. Even now he suffered poignantly when he heard the tearing of cloth, the rubbing of a finger against a piece of ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... between the captain and the count that it would be desirable in every way to maintain the most rigid silence upon the subject of the inexplicable phenomena which had come within their experience. It was to them both a subject of the greatest perplexity to find that the shores of the Mediterranean had undergone no change, but they coincided in the opinion that it was prudent to keep their bewilderment entirely to themselves. ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... paper, thick with dust; 'Mid glasses, boxes, where eye can see, Filled with old, obsolete instruments, Stuffed with old heirlooms of implements— That is thy world! There's a world for thee! And still dost ask what stifles so The fluttering heart within thy breast? By what inexplicable woe The springs of life are all oppressed? Instead of living nature, where God made and planted men, his sons, Through smoke and mould, around thee stare Grim skeletons and dead men's bones. Up! Fly! Far out into the land! And this mysterious volume, see! By Nostradamus's[5] own hand, Is it not ...
— Faust • Goethe
... "Then the crime is inexplicable, M. Dollon. You have just told me yourself that there was no one in the chateau but Mme. de Langrune, the two young people Therese and Charles, and the two maids: it certainly is not any one of those who can be the guilty person, for the way in which ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... come to pass! As Clement bent down and took her hand and looked into her eyes his heart seemed to stop death-still for a few seconds—then something new and inexplicable took possession of him, and he stood before her calm and clear-eyed. "Don't move," he commanded, "I will draw ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... overwhelming array of evidence, was far greater than that of previous discussions. With one or two reservations as to the logical completeness of the theory, Huxley accepted it as a well-founded working hypothesis, calculated to explain problems otherwise inexplicable. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... follow the gifts with which he had been natively endowed. Precept, example, opportunity—all these went for naught. To the end of his days he viewed the American "business man" as a portentous and inexplicable phenomenon—one to be regarded with distaste and wonder. He persisted in thinking of the type as a juvenile one—an energetic and clever boy, who was immensely active and immensely productive of results (in an immensely limited field), but who was incapable of anything like an apercu or a Weltanschauung ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... Goethe has put these enchanting and voluptuous customs into poetry, and his verses are so perfect, so harmonious, so tasteful, so soft, that it seems really surprising that he should ever have been able to have brought the German language to this state of suppleness. The charm of the book is inexplicable; it is a votive nosegay sent from the West to the East, composed of the most precious and curious plants: red roses, hortensias like the breast of a spotless maiden, purple digitalis like the long finger of a man, fantastically formed ranunculi, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... Many inexplicable things happen "on Labrador." Thus, one year while visiting at the head of Hamilton Inlet, a Scotch settler came aboard to ask my advice about a large animal that had appeared round his house. Though he had ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Bower are inexplicable. Her father sold farming machinery in Huntington, Illinois, and she had grown up with no acquaintances or experiences outside of that prairie town. Yet from her earliest childhood she had not one conviction or opinion in common with the people about ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... and depth, but not the river-like channels which actually exist. If, again, we suppose the last movement to have been one of subsidence, reducing the size of the islands, these channels are quite as inexplicable; for subsidence would necessarily lead to the flooding of all low tracts on the banks of the old rivers, and thus obliterate their courses; whereas these remain perfect, and of nearly uniform width from end ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... language and breadth of vision. There was in it a rational explanation of certain elementary processes which to Thompson had never been accounted for save by means of the supernatural, the mysterious, the inexplicable. Huxley was merely sharpening a function of his mind which had been dormant until he ran amuck among the books. He began to perceive order in the universe and all that it contained, that natural phenomena could be interpreted by a study of nature, that there was something more than a name in ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... come to her. She did not attribute this sensation to fatigue. She did not try to analyse it. She only felt as if she had never seen or heard anything that was not cheerless, as if she had never known anything that was not either sad, or odd, or inexplicable. What did she remember? A train of trifles that seemed to have been enough to fill all her life; the arrival of the nervous and badly-dressed recruits at the wharf, their embarkation, their last staring and pathetic look at France, the stormy voyage, the sordid illness ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... como impulsado por un resorte, 15 al oir semejante clamor dentro de su casa, y apoyose en la mesa para no caer de nuevo sobre la silla. Tendio en torno suyo una mirada de inexplicable regocijo, dejo ver en sus labios la inmortal sonrisa del triunfador, y asi, transfigurado y hermoso, con el doble temblor de la muerte y del entusiasmo, pronuncio 20 las siguientes palabras, entrecortadas y solemnes como las campanadas del ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... drained the writer dry of every particle of suggestiveness, and then recreated the material in new and imperishable forms. The process of reproduction was individual, and is not to be shared by others; it was the expression of that rare and inexplicable personal energy which we call genius; but the process of absorption may be shared by all who care to submit to the discipline which it involves. It is clear that Shakespeare read in such a way as to possess what he read; he not only remembered it, but ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... barometer wagged to and fro like pendulums; and overhead, seamen were singing out at their work, and coils of rope clattering and thumping on the deck. Yet it was long before I had divined that I was at sea; long before I had recalled, one after another, the tragical, mysterious, and inexplicable events that ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... the release, felt the sudden inexplicable isolation and aloneness even before Alvar and Johnson used their life-guns and shot out of sight, Johnson toward the left and Alvar back toward that ...
— To Each His Star • Bryce Walton
... was such considerations that explained the relative silence of the champions of the Copernican theory, accounting for the otherwise inexplicable fact that about eighty years elapsed after the death of Copernicus himself before a single text-book expounded his theory. The text-book which then appeared, under date of 1622, was written by the famous Kepler, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... he had been considerably startled by the inexplicable occurrence himself, "you know there are no such ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... effect that, if Austria drew the sword for Napoleon III. she would have to reckon with an irruption of the Russians into her open Galician frontier. Probably this accounts for the conduct of the Hapsburg Power, which otherwise is inexplicable. A war of revenge against Prussia seemed to be the natural step to take. True, the Emperor Francis Joseph had small cause to like Napoleon III. The loss of Lombardy in 1859 still rankled in the breast of every patriotic Austrian; and the suspicions which that enigmatical ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... the manner in which this can be carried out, and incidentally, an insight into the preparedness of Germany for the war, is seen in an analysis of the extraordinary and otherwise inexplicable network of railways recently erected by Germany to tap the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... course of life that we are driven by some inexplicable fatality to suffer those very afflictions we dread the most. We are told of persons who trembled for a lifetime at the horrid anticipation of being one day mad; it was the shadow of the judgement that was creeping on them, which cast them finally amongst ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... the blood which had been shed there, and with the tower of unknown origin looming above me, I became very uncomfortable again, nor did I envy Van Roon his eerie residence. The proximity of a tower of any kind, at night, makes in some inexplicable way for awe, and to-night there ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... not a ragged baron who has levied toll for passage through the public squares, a privileged robber who has shut up for you a pleasant street or waylaid you at an interesting church, but he is sure to be there. How they got there is as inexplicable as how the apples got into the dumplings in Peter Pindar's poem. But at the first ring of a festa-bell, they start up from under ground, (those who are legless getting only half-way up,) like Roderick Dhu's men, and level their crutches at you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... old buffer in scarlet and gold who periodically takes an inexplicable interest in Tommy's belt and brass buttons. An excuse for his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... puzzled the vegetable physiologist than the alternations of forest growths which are everywhere occurring without the apparent interposition of natural seeds, and which have been considered as wholly inexplicable except as one unsatisfactory theory after another has been suggested to account for the wide dissemination and distribution of their seeds. We have had any number of these theories, more or less ingeniously constructed, but it is safe to say that none of them satisfactorily ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... it was strange and inexplicable that the suggestion of the girl's probable fate should have affected Billy Byrne as it did. He did not stop to reason about it at all—he simply knew that he felt a mad and unreasoning rage against the creatures that had borne the girl away. ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... remarkable fact that the human race on this particular world has, in some inexplicable way, come to look upon the future as non-existent until we arrive at, and are able to perceive, with our senses, what is happening there; this is all the more inexplicable when we realise that in traversing Space we certainly have to move to get anywhere, ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... house. Nevertheless, supposing it was Hilda, Maggie would assuredly come into the drawing-room—she could not do otherwise— and the three-cornered interview would, he felt, be very trying. He knew that Maggie, for some reason inexplicable by argument, was out of sympathy with Hilda, as with Hilda's son. She had given him regular news of George, who was now at about the same stage of convalescence as him sell, but she scarcely mentioned the mother, and he had not dared to inquire. These thoughts flashed through ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... at first all alone and afterward with my wife, were so hard that it makes me shudder even now when I think of them. Often it seemed as if we were not only encompassed by hostile men, but also by hostile powers of darkness; for often an inexplicable, unutterable fear would come over us, so that we had to get up at night, and go on our knees to pray or read the Word of God, ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... superfluous exertion. His idleness was not hygienic, but it suited him very well. He was in a manner devoted to it with a sort of inert fanaticism, or perhaps rather with a fanatical inertness. Born of industrious parents for a life of toil, he had embraced indolence from an impulse as profound as inexplicable and as imperious as the impulse which directs a man's preference for one particular woman in a given thousand. He was too lazy even for a mere demagogue, for a workman orator, for a leader of labour. It was too much trouble. He required a more perfect form of ease; or it ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... compared; and, by God's teaching and the assistance of his sent servants, the child of God becomes mighty in the Scriptures. Let not mystery stagger you: we are surrounded with mysteries; we ourselves are mysteries inexplicable: nor let the doctrine of election stagger you; how small a part of God's ways do we know, or can comprehend! rejoice that he has given you the heritage of his people—leave the rest to him: 'Shall not the Judge of all the earth ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... and the natives had kept so close a watch all night along the slopes at the lower end, and at the mouth, that they felt sure that their prey could not have escaped them unseen. And yet at last they were forced to come to the confusion that in some inexplicable way this must have been the case, for how else could they have escaped? The thought that they had reascended by the rope before it was removed, and that they were hidden in the cave at the time ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... involved forms of all, as seen in the orchid—the multifarious, multiversant orchid; the beautiful orchid; the ugly orchid; the fragrant orchid; the fetid orchid; the graceful, homely, grotesque, uncanny, mimetic, and, until the year 1859, the absolutely non-committal and inexplicable flower; the blossom which had waited through the ages for Darwin, its chosen interpreter, ere she yielded ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... strong contrast to the contents of his store-room, which was full, mainly, of massive white furniture picked out in gold, and very blond. He said casually that it had been there, off and on, since long before he could remember, and at these words an impression, vague, inexplicable, ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... shall ever forget it; but now I must first ascertain where the will of the late Sir William is to be found. We can read it for a shilling, and then I may discover what are the grounds of Melchior's conduct, for, to me, it is still inexplicable." ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... navigation before them, they had time to improve their acquaintance with Vilcamapata, who was never tired of expressing his gratitude to Dick and Stukely for having saved him from a terrible death. But it soon became apparent that, for some inexplicable reason, he regarded Stukely as much the more important personage of the two, his devotion to Phil being of such a pronounced character that it almost amounted to worship. This, of course, might have been accounted for to some extent by the ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... attracts the mind and gives rise to manifold contemplation; so the ancient tragedy leads us forward to the highest reflections involved in the very sphere of things it sets before us—reflections on the nature and the inexplicable mystery of man's being. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... the door of the tent, apprehending something new and inexplicable in her attitude. In the music of her voice as she spoke to the sick man was the love-note of the mate. "You may come in," she called back, and Nash, stooping, entered the ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... of profound peace. No wars nor rumors of war disturbed the humble mind, and the blow was utterly unexpected and inexplicable. ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... had grown so strong that she felt more warmly toward the sick Caesar than was justifiable. She could not deny it, for she could not without a blush have described to her lover what she felt when that mysterious, inexplicable power had drawn her to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Carley found herself carrying a bountiful basket on her arm, faring forth on an adventure that both thrilled and depressed her. Long before this hour something about Glenn's work had quickened her pulse and given rise to an inexplicable admiration. That he was big and strong enough to do such labor made her proud; that he might want to go on doing it ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... James felt a long shudder creep over him. He had never been afraid of anything except fear. Now he was afraid of fear, and there was something about the man which awakened this terror, yet it was inexplicable. He was a middle-aged man, and distinctly handsome. He was something above the medium height, and very well dressed. He wore a fur-lined coat which looked opulent. He had gray hair and a black mustache. ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... It may seem inexplicable that the Power which stood up boldly at the Treaty of Utrecht as the shameless champion of negro slavery was the very one which was celebrated in South Africa for its morbid love of the natives; the explanation, however, is that it was not so much love for the native that ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... jealousies. He was to learn, a couple of months later, how much he had been mistaken in his estimate of Bazaine's talents and rectitude of purpose; and, indeed, Bazaine's conduct toward Gambetta and the Republicans from first to last was the more inexplicable, as it was unquestionably owing to their agitation that he was placed in the high ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... hitting upon what is strange, sometimes from a crafty wresting of obvious matter to the purpose. Often it consisteth in one knows not what, and springeth up one can hardly tell how. Its ways are unaccountable and inexplicable, being answerable to the numberless rovings of fancy ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... swarms amid the clouds of the volcanic dust; - why are their tiny shells of flint as fantastically various in their quaint mathematical symmetry, as they are countless beyond the wildest dreams of the Poet? Mystery inexplicable on the conceited notion which, making man forsooth the centre of the universe, dares to believe that this variety of forms has existed for countless ages in abysmal sea-depths and untrodden forests, only that ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... let fall the precious relic with gestures of horror. To these ingenuous souls the mystery that wrapped their unknown visitor became inexplicable, and the priest from that day forth forbade himself to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various |
