"Inscrutable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... There was a reason for everything; there were reasons for all this. I alone had been saved out of all those souls who sailed from Melbourne in the Lady Jermyn. Why should I have been the favored one; I with my broken heart and now lonely life? Some great inscrutable reason there must be; at my worst I did not deny that. But neither did I puzzle my sick brain with the reason. I just waited for it to be revealed to me, if it were God's will ever to reveal it. And that I conceive to be the one spirit in which a man may contemplate, ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... ever its cry of joy over the vitality of life, like a spirited boy before the face of inscrutable nature ...
— Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases • Grenville Kleiser
... and every one crowded about him to congratulate him on his skill. His only answer, however, was his inscrutable smile. ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... of antiquity have bequeathed to all succeeding time several of earth's noblest epics, while the contemporaneous prose, if any existed, has long lain buried in the inscrutable ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... significance of such a scene, in which patriotism and religion become one—and feel, too, the exquisite dramatic effect of the innocent, the weak, the unwarlike, welcoming among them, without fear, because without guilt, those ancient snaky-haired sisters, emblems of all that is most terrible and most inscrutable, in the destiny of nations, of families, ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... situation, happy in the gentle and protecting affection the girl showed him, fitfully enough, for she had, as she called it, her bad days when she used to visit her mother and remain long hours in the riverside hut, coming out as inscrutable as ever, but with a contemptuous look and a short word ready to answer any of his speeches. He got used even to that, and on those days kept quiet, although greatly alarmed by his wife's influence upon the girl. Otherwise Nina adapted herself ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... than ill; but, at the same time, I was quite incapable of describing what I felt to nurse, For some inscrutable reason I had even lost the ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... not only does not easily relegate it, but even makes its continuance a test of the affections. The usual triumphant feminine conclusion, "Then you no longer love me," had in Clarence's brief experience gone even further and reached its inscrutable climax, "Then I no longer love you," although shown only in a momentary hardening of the eye and voice. And added to this was his sudden, but confused remembrance that he had seen that eye and heard that voice in marital altercation during Judge Peyton's life, ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... terminated in the morning of my life. I am denied the fruition of those glorious hopes which prompted me to distinguish myself by deeds deserving virtuous renown. So wills the Ruler of the universe. Blind and cruel instruments often accomplish the inscrutable designs of Providence; but I have been taught to consider all its purposes as issuing in mercy. I fought for a virtuous King; I die for his exiled son. My name shall live in honour when Bellingham and all the vile associates of Cromwell ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... all right for himself. He was seated behind a small table in the center of the stage. A pale violet light diffused through a huge crystal ball on the table, and threw his dark features into sharp relief. It gave an astonishingly remote and inscrutable wisdom to his features. In the pale light, and at this distance, ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... did not fall, however, upon hearing this announcement; on the contrary, it shed forth inscrutable satisfaction. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... you do ... I believe you do...." I said again and again, "and I want you." My voice rose higher and higher. She stood motionless, an inscrutable white figure, like some silent Greek statue, a harmony of falling folds of heavy drapery ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... I do without you? How long are we likely to be separated? Why are we to be denied each other's society? It is an inscrutable fatality. I long to be with you, because it seems as if two or three days, or weeks, spent in your company would beyond measure strengthen me in the enjoyment of those feelings which I have so lately begun to cherish. You first pointed out to me that way in which I am ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Fate plays us so many apparently unnecessary tricks, and we are all of us such blind madmen, knowing not whither we are going from one day to another! I am told that it is no longer fashionable to believe in a devil—but I care nothing for fashion! A devil there is I am sure, who for some inscrutable reason has a share in the ruling of this planet—a devil who delights in mocking us from the cradle to the grave. And perhaps we are never so hopelessly, utterly fooled as in ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... By the river old and gray, Where in the Long Ago We laughed and loitered so, I met a ghost to-day, A ghost that told of you - A ghost of low replies And sweet, inscrutable eyes Coming up from Richmond As you ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... these things he kept his eyes fixed intently upon Curly's face, not realising that he was staring so hard. But Curly did, and glancing up several times from his cards, he met those steady, inscrutable eyes. At first it annoyed him, making him nervous and impatient. He wondered what the quiet, reserved fellow meant by looking at him in such a manner. At length he became angry, and noticing that the eyes never left his face, he leaped to his feet with a savage oath, and moving over to where Reynolds ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... occurred here in 1849, though dead bodies were taken out of the neighboring alley (Church-lane) six or eight in a day. So much for the blasphemy of terming the Cholera, with like scourges, the work of an "inscrutable Providence." The like exemption from Cholera was enjoyed by the two or three other Model Lodging-Houses then in London. Their comparative cleanliness, and the coolness in summer caused by the great thickness of their walls, conduce greatly to this ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... display at will a Japanese liveliness of expression or become a mask of Indian gravity, surveyed the speaker with inscrutable eyes. ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... fluency, and without the slightest attempt at either grammar or idiomatic accuracy. And they both profoundly believed in their hearts that the rank, wealth, youth, beauty and fashion of all other nations were wisely ordained by the inscrutable designs of Providence for a single purpose, to enrich and reward the active, intelligent, and industrious ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... said, and the little train rattled down the canon. Miss Milbrey stood in the door of the car, and Percival watched her while the glistening rails that seemed to be pushing her away narrowed in perspective. She stood motionless and inscrutable to the last, but still looking steadily toward him—almost wistfully, it seemed ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... arcades around it, all the sculpture in the court is, in feeling, an intimate part of the romantic architecture. This portion of the art of the court is best considered as decoration, finding its justification in the beauty it imparts to the whole. It has genuine meaning, but what that is remains inscrutable so long as the court is called ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... when I think of the blood that has stained the cause of freedom at Paris; but I also hear the same live stream cry aloud from the highways through which the retreating armies passed with famine and death in their rear, and I hide my face with awe before the inscrutable ways of Providence, sweeping in such various directions the besom of destruction ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... down below and began to talk to the Old Man I soon found that he was, for some inscrutable reason, utterly opposed to any such idea. He would not give his reasons, but he positively forbade me to do as I had suggested, instructing me instead to work out a Great Circle track to Canton, and to get the ship upon her proper ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... placidity secrets that none can discern. He was always near nowadays, on the fringe of their lives, just beyond the radius of their preoccupations, the silent witness of this strange love affair, in the humble station that Allah, for some inscrutable reason, ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... earlier period John Quincy Adams had been a Federalist by conviction as well as by education. Nor was there any obvious reason for him to change his political faith with the change of party success, brought about as that was before its necessity was apparent but by the sure and inscrutable wisdom so marvellously enclosed in the great popular instinct. It was not patent, when Mr. Jefferson succeeded Mr. Adams, that Federalism was soon to become an unsound political creed—unsound, not ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... The queen buried her face in her hands; the princess had knelt again and prayed; the king leaned his head against the back of the chair, pale as a corpse, and with his eyes closed. Napoleon alone stood erect; his face was calm and inscrutable; his glances were turned toward the windows, and he seemed to listen eagerly ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... others define her, she is a substantial protection, presiding over the particular destinies of individuals, and feigned by the ancient theologians to be the daughter of Justice, looking down from a certain inscrutable eternity upon all terrestrial ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... Indians started to unload, Watusk came down to the beach, followed by several of his councilors. It was impossible to tell from his inscrutable, self-important air what he thought of ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... strongest relief, and with wonderful truth of coloring. The expression was that of agony—the agony of intense bodily pain; but a menace scowled upon the brow, and a few sprinklings of blood added to its ghastliness. Yet it was not all these characteristics—it was some horror of the mind, some inscrutable antipathy awakened by this picture, which harrowed ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... The inscrutable woman who caused such general dismay in the parish was an object of much pity. Avoided, feared, and detested, she could find no rest for her weary feet, nor any shelter for her unprotected head. If she was seen approaching a house, the door and windows ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... these, and on the morrow be a colorless ghost in the distant past. Its constancy will secure our immortality. The grandeur of the year may be the strength of our character; and as the East receives it, we may enter the inscrutable future reverently and ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... if the Sire God in His inscrutable providence should call your son to His holy side, what provision have you made for so mighty a fortune? Does your daughter ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... an inscrutable stranger meet and love in an oasis of the Sahara. Staged this season with magnificent cast and ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... would," answered Gertrude in her most inscrutable manner. "Well, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll take tonight—only just tonight, to settle this with my conscience—and I will see you in the morning—early, if you ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... that in the Bible is recorded every event by which the Deity will work the ultimate happiness of the human race, but that the great plan is, for the most part, represented by types and shadows, and otherwise so wrapped up in mysteries, as to be inscrutable to human wisdom. As the Lord pronounced that man should become dead to knowledge if he ate the forbidden fruit, so the Lord must prove his words true. He therefore selected a peculiar people as depositaries of the records of that knowledge; and he appeared among them, and ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... difference in his feelings. Perhaps there was more of the brotherly character in them than he thought. For a moment they looked at each other, and he thought he made this discovery—while she met his eyes with that look which she did not know was inscrutable, which she feared was full of self-betrayal. "I believe," she said, bending her head, "that that is what ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... came out and the inscrutable twinkle grew in her lovely eyes. Dottie chattered on sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph, theme after theme, always rounding up at the end with some perfectly obvious leading question. Ruth answered in all ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... was a study. Melicent, who did what she wanted with him, had chosen this afternoon, for some inscrutable reason, to make him happy. He carried her shawl and parasol; she herself bearing a veritable armful of flowers, leaves, red berried sprigs, a tangle of richest color. They had been in the woods and she had bedecked ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... him with puzzled young eyes. He stood before her, dignified, eminently worthy of the great name he bore—a solitary, dark-eyed, inscrutable man, whose whole being subtly suggested hopelessness and an empty ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... By some inscrutable turn of affairs, lady Feng begins to feel the pangs of jealousy. Pao-yue experiences joy, beyond all his expectations, when P'ing Erh (receives a slap from lady Feng) and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... is obviously desirable I can well imagine Broadly speaking An admirable idea In a literal sense By sheer force of genius You can imagine his chagrin I hazard a guess It challenges belief He has an inscrutable face Very fertile in resource I am loath to believe It is essentially undignified Example is so contagious I am not in her confidence Taken in the aggregate It is a reproof to shallowness There is a misconception here I strongly suspect it so He was covered with confusion ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... subjected Clotilde Destange. Mademoiselle had encountered him with the same serenity as the blonde lady and he felt that he was again face to face with one of those creatures who, protected by Arsene Lupin and under the direct action of his influence, preserved the most inscrutable calmness amid ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... of dissimulation, together with advancing age, had given the queen-mother that well-known abbess face, with its haughty and macerated mask, expressionless yet full of depth, inscrutable yet vigilant, remarked by all who have studied her portrait, the courtiers now observed some clouds on her icy countenance. No sovereign was ever so imposing as this woman from the day when she succeeded in restraining the Guises ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... she could not find the things he called for, even broke into restrained profanity now and then. She went a little pale over her mistakes, but preserved her dignity and her wits. Now and then he found her dark eyes fixed on him, with something inscrutable but pleasing in their depths. The situation was: rather piquant. Consciously he was thinking only of what he was doing. Subconsciously his busy ego was finding solace after ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... body slightly sidewise, the better to face him. The soft silk fell in new lines about her, defining new curves. Her red lips smiled softly, and her eyes were dark and inscrutable. ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... sign of guile or satire on the face of the Secretary of War. On the contrary, it bore every appearance of earnestness, and he became convinced that the appearance was just. Then he cast one swift glance at the inscrutable Mr. Sefton, who still sat in the ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Amaryllis' brain; she felt how limited had been all her thoughts and standpoints in life. She had been willing to drift on without speculation as to the goal to be reached. Indeed, even now, had she any definite goal? She looked at the Russian's strong, rugged face, his inscrutable eyes narrowed and gazing ahead—of what was he thinking? Not ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... it must be all right. Marilla knew best and Marilla was bringing her up. Probably some wise, inscrutable motive was to be served thereby. But surely it would do no harm to let the child have one pretty dress—something like Diana Barry always wore. Matthew decided that he would give her one; that surely could not be objected to as an unwarranted putting in of his oar. Christmas was only ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... probably, with Poppy and some others. Monday, up the river with Himself. Not for worlds, that is to say, not for any amount of Poppies, would he have broken his appointment with that brilliant and yet inscrutable companion who is so eternally fascinating at twenty-three. Monday was indistinct but luminous, a restless, shimmering background for ideas. Ideas! They swarmed like motes in the blue air; they loomed, they floated, vague, and somewhat supernaturally large, all made ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... After all that I had seen I had expected that she would take the earliest opportunity of claiming the man she believed to be her old-world lover, but this, for some reason of her own, which was at the time quite inscrutable to me, she did not do. All that she did was to attend to his wants quietly, and with a humility which was in striking contrast with her former imperious bearing, addressing him always in a tone of something very like respect, and keeping him with her ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... from his picture of luxury, of steam yachts, of country estates, of unlimited bank accounts, with a smile which showed her confidence in her beauty, her talents. The audience watched her, spellbound, as she stood on the sidewalk before the theater, looking with grave inscrutable eyes after the costly limousine that had just driven away without her. In no picture heretofore taken of the girl had she appeared to better advantage. Every line of her lovely face seemed responsive to the effect of the lighting, ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... away, and the rising sunshine of the Easter morning pours into it, we have a visible symbol of the life and immortality which Jesus Christ then brought to light by His Gospel. The buried grave speaks of the inscrutable mystery that wrapped the future: the open sepulchre proclaims the risen Lord of life, and the sunlight certainty of future blessedness which we owe to Him. Death is solitary no more, though it be lonely as far ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... times unto my mind, and beholding you not with the inquisitive eye of presumption, to discover that which the Scripture telleth me is inscrutable, but with the observant eye of duty and admiration, leaving aside the other parts of your virtue and fortune, I have been touched—yea, and possessed—with an extreme wonder at those your virtues and faculties, which the philosophers call intellectual; the largeness ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... I, the chauffeur wasn't cross, but only concentrated. If I had to drive a powerful, untamed car like this, up and down roads like that, I should certainly get motor-car face, a kind of inscrutable, frozen mask that not all the cold cream in ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... upon the boat adrift that carried that poor infant and its murdered mother! No, it was the hand of God. Why might not the same hand restore him to me in the midst of the desert? The ways of Providence are inscrutable." ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... some Sufficient Cause, scent the tainted atmosphere of Europe and turn Westward his devastating march. The millions of dead left in his path through Asia proved nothing. They were unarmed, ignorant, defenceless, unaided by science, undefended by art. The cholera was to them inscrutable and irresistible as Azrael, the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... went away healed. Clive was a Theosophist: all men were her brothers, and all women her sisters; but those especially among art-workers who fell by the wayside might share her bread and blanket. They called her Old Mother Sphinx, because of her inscrutable eyes, and ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... been introduced effectually into society, and have now only to choose our acquaintance among those whom we like best. I should employ another word than choose, for I am convinced that there is no choice in the matter. In his friendships and affections, man is subject to some inscrutable moral law, similar in its effects to what the chemists call affinity. While under the blind influence of this sympathy, we, forsooth, suppose ourselves free agents! But ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... which moves on in love and desertion and anguish, always hovered over by the dark spectre of INSANITY—an insanity hereditary and induced by mental torture,—until it ends, if end it must in your verdict, by one of those fearful accidents, which are inscrutable to men and of which God alone ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... his own particular way, both instinctively exchanged meaning glances, in a religious silence of the strictly entre nous variety however, towards where Skin-the-Goat, alias the keeper, not turning a hair, was drawing spurts of liquid from his boiler affair. His inscrutable face which was really a work of art, a perfect study in itself, beggaring description, conveyed the impression that he didn't understand one jot of what was ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... and, under that vaporous veil, how profound and inscrutable! How easy to slip into its all-embracing arms, and sink into its yielding bosom, leaving behind no stain, trace, or record! A surer oblivion than the Church, which could not absolve memory, grant forgetfulness, nor even hide the ghastly footprints of its occupants. Here was obliteration. ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... simplest means. His experiment was in a different way daily performed for him by nature. He was philosophically daring, indifferently a tinker with nature's terrific machinery; a knocker at the door of an august temple that men were never known to have entered; a mortal who smiled in the face of inscrutable and awful mystery, and who defied the lightning in a sense not merely moral. [Footnote: Professor Richmann, of St. Petersburg, was instantly killed by lightning while repeating ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... as the face of Penrod Schofield. Except in solitude, that face was almost always cryptic and emotionless; for Penrod had come into his twelfth year wearing an expression carefully trained to be inscrutable. Since the world was sure to misunderstand everything, mere defensive instinct prompted him to give it as little as possible to lay hold upon. Nothing is more impenetrable than the face of a boy who has learned this, and Penrod's was habitually as fathomless as the depth ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... And he is not a hypocrite either. If your father was half as—" She stopped abruptly, her face going red when she saw Tom sitting on his horse beyond the shoulder of rock, regarding her with that inscrutable smile which never had failed to make her squirm mentally and wonder what he thought of her. She stood up, trembling ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... up, startled at hearing in English the phrase of Spanish courtesy so familiar to her ears; but Mr. Montfort's face was inscrutable, as he brought forward a chair, and handed her to it as if she were ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... what to religion! One would not willingly pronounce these words in their hearing, and give them the occasion to profane them. I saw a gracious gentleman who adapts his conversation to the form of the head of the man he talks with! I had fancied that the value of life lay in its inscrutable possibilities; in the fact that I never know, in addressing myself to a new individual, what may befall me. I carry the keys of my castle in my hand, ready to throw them at the feet of my lord, whenever and in what disguise soever he shall appear. ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... up, and could scarcely repress the shriek which was rising to my lips. Was it possible? Yes, all too certain; the evil one was upon me; the inscrutable horror which I had felt in my boyhood had once more taken possession of me. I had thought that it had forsaken me—that it would never visit me again; that I had outgrown it; that I might almost bid defiance to it; and I had even ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... fixed to the wall. The priest wore an old buckskin jacket with a tasseled fringe, and long, soft moccasins, and looked like an Indian until one studied his thin face. His forehead was lined, as if by thought or suffering, and his skin was darkened by wind and frost, but the Indian's glance is inscrutable and his was calm and frank. One got a ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... tolerably large order, isn't it?" Thorpe asked, calmly, moving a slow, inscrutable glance from one to the other of ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... could only be a progressive magnifying of what then was going on. "Just as" to quote Mr. Chesterton's admirable Dr. Pelkins, "just as when we see a pig in a litter larger than the other pigs, we know that by an unalterable law of the Inscrutable, it will some day be larger than an elephant...so we know and reverently acknowledge that when any power in human politics has shown for any period of time any considerable activity, it will go on until ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... bending forward over the table on which his hands fell clenched, was studying Leila with an inscrutable stare that seemed to be of query. I was wondering what it meant, wondering the more because my failure to understand its meaning hung another veil between my vision and my shrine of belief in the fullness of love, when the song outside came ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... most comprehensive of these assumptions is nothing less than the complex vision itself, with that "something," which is the soul, as its inscrutable base. Thus I am permitted to retain, in spite of its arbitrary fantasy, my pictorial image of a pyramidal arrow of fire, moving from darkness to darkness. My picture were false to my conception if it did ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... the Council, in order that his Majesty might decide according to his pleasure; and [it was declared that] in the interim the cabildo should govern the archdiocese. [82] And here it occurs to me to remark, parenthetically, that, although the secrets and the justifiable motives of the Audiencia are inscrutable, we may regard it as probable that their principal reason for this action was their knowledge of the fact that this bishop, a few days after arriving in this city, had preached in the convent of Santo Domingo, on the day of the naval battle, [83] and the entire ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... a modified polytheistic belief or a personalized God, still attempt to persuade the Power in their own behalf, to act favorably to their own purposes and follow those who claim knowledge of the divine and inscrutable,—the priest, minister, rabbi, the man of ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... Kipling, he will propound the proposition that "all true literature has a distinct aim." His test of literary merit is "What good does it do you?" He is a great lender of books, especially of Carlyle and Ruskin, which authors for some absolutely inscrutable reason he considers provocative of Bagarrowism, and he goes to the County Council lectures on dairy-work, because it encourages others to improve themselves. But I have said enough to display him, and of Bagarrow at least—as I can well testify—it is easy to have more than ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... serious men pity anglers,' says Auceps, and Venator styles them 'patient men,' as surely they have great need to be. For our toil, like that of the husbandman, hangs on the weather that Heaven sends, and on the flies that have their birth or being from a kind of dew, and on the inscrutable caprice of fish; also, in England, on the miller, who giveth or withholdeth at his pleasure the very water that is our element. The inquiring rustic who shambles up erect when we are lying low among the reeds, even he disposes of ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... world have been brought about by the subordinate agency of such causes as "Variation" and "Natural Selection." All our advances in the knowledge of Nature have consisted of such steps as these, and we must not be discouraged because greater mysteries remain behind wholly inscrutable to us. ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... without laughing: his fleshless lips never relaxed into a smile. To Carmina's unutterable embarrassment, he looked at her, when she laughed, with steadier attention than ever. Those coldly-inquiring eyes exercised some inscrutable influence over her. Now they made her angry; and now they frightened her. The silence that had fallen on them again, became an unendurable infliction. She burst into talk; she was loud and familiar—ashamed of her own boldness, and quite unable to control it. "You are very fond ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... joined in anything with a frank delight, not with any touch of condescension. They were even more kindly and affectionate than others, because they did not seem to have any small problems of their own, and could give their whole attention and thought to the person they were with. These inscrutable people puzzled me very much. I ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... God the first cause of matter as well as of mind? Do not the first attributes of matter lie as inscrutable in the bosom of God—of its first author—as those of mind? Has not even matter confessedly received from God the power of experiencing, in consequence of impressions from the earlier modifications ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... subordinate relations are voluntary, in others they are necessary,—but the duties are all compulsive. When we marry, the choice is voluntary, but the duties are not matter of choice: they are dictated by the nature of the situation. Dark and inscrutable are the ways by which we come into the world. The instincts which give rise to this mysterious process of Nature are not of our making. But out of physical causes, unknown to us, perhaps unknowable, arise moral duties, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... getting together a little money, he had set up as a shopkeeper. His name—but I could never learn whether it was his real one, or a nickname that had grown out of his habits and success in life—was Gathergold. Being shrewd and active, and endowed by Providence with that inscrutable faculty which develops itself in what the world calls luck, he became an exceedingly rich merchant, and owner of a whole fleet of bulky-bottomed ships. All the countries of the globe appeared to join hands for the mere purpose of adding heap after heap to the mountainous accumulation ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... on arriving at which he puts his vessel in his pocket, when he summons his craft to his aid, and gets a place in the king's kitchen to carry wood and water for the maid. The king's daughter has for some inscrutable reason been promised to three ogres, who come successively to fetch her; and a certain Ritter Red professes to be man enough to rescue her, but on the approach of the first ogre proves to be a coward and climbs a tree. But Shortshanks slips off from his scullery; and having a weapon which can put ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... and the lesser varieties of language which arise out of the many degrees and kinds of human intercourse, there is also the unknown or over-ruling law of God or nature which gives order to it in its infinite greatness, and variety in its infinitesimal minuteness—both equally inscrutable to us. We need no longer discuss whether philology is to be classed with the Natural or the Mental sciences, if we frankly recognize that, like all the sciences which are concerned with man, it has a double aspect,—inward and outward; and that the inward can only be known through the outward. ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... untimely, yet with how spectral an officiousness, stepped he in between me and my ambition! At Vienna, too—at Berlin—and at Moscow! Where, in truth, had I not bitter cause to curse him within my heart? From his inscrutable tyranny did I at length flee, panic-stricken, as from a pestilence; and to the very ends of the earth ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... yards of wet and trampled earth about the feet of his horse. His comrades in that ghostly domain were invisible and inaudible. These were conditions favorable to thought, and he was thinking. Of the nature of his thoughts his clear-cut handsome features yielded no attesting sign. His face was as inscrutable as that of the sphinx. Why should it have made a record which there was none to observe? At the sound of a footstep he merely turned his eyes in the direction whence it came; one of his sergeants, looking a giant ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... preserved an impassible exterior, had neither forgotten nor dismissed them. He had simply applied to himself his own famous maxim, "Wait and Hope." He was waiting and hoping for the best, for God in His inscrutable wisdom to bring mysterious good out of ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... riveted. Next she had plucked her gaze home again like a tame bird who should have meditated flight. Possibilities crowded on her; she hung over the future and grew dizzy; the image of this young man, slim, graceful, dark, with the inscrutable half-smile, attracted and repelled her like a chasm. "I wonder, will I have met my fate?" she thought, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the book. No great while, however, elapsed, when, rising also from his seat with a hasty exclamation of surprise, he threw down the volume and followed her into the room where she sat pensively meditating over thoughts and feelings as vague and inscrutable to her mind, as they were clear and familiar to her heart. With a degree of warm impetuosity, even exaggerated beyond his usual manner, which bore at all times this characteristic, he approached her, and, seizing her hand passionately in ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... moment had arrived for Jella[vc]i['c] to found at last an independent Yugoslav dominion. On December 20, 1848, he wrote to him: "An inscrutable destiny has placed you, O illustrious Ban, at the head of the Southern Slavs. You have preserved their throne, their destiny for the Habsburgs.... A grand mission is yours; from it may arise a new formation of Europe. Its accomplishment would ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... Babbacombe had expected this much from the moment of their meeting. He sometimes told himself with a wry face that if the fellow had behaved like a beast he would have found him easier to cultivate. At least, he would have had something to work upon, a creature of flesh and blood, instead of this inscrutable statue wrought ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... hardened villains and thereby renders them often instruments of justice upon themselves; so that it seems not virtue only is its own reward, but vice also brings upon itself those torments which it ought to feel. Thus Providence ordereth, with inscrutable wisdom, that every man should feel happiness or misery according as his own demeanour serves. But it is now time that ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... we had got down Glenaora as far as Carnus that we found either kindness or conversation. In that pleasant huddle of small cothouses, the Macarthurs, aye a dour and buoyant race, were making up their homes again as fast as they could, inspired by the old philosophy that if an inscrutable God should level a poor man's dwelling with the dust of the valley, he should even take the stroke with calmness and start to the building again. So the Macarthurs, some of them back from their flight before Antrim and Athole, were throng bearing stone from the river and turf from the brae, and ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... upon it. Mhtoon Pah moved about looking at his goods, and touching them with careful hands. He hovered over an ivory lady carrying an umbrella, and looked long at a white marble Buddha, who returned his look with an equally inscrutable regard. The Buddha sat cross-legged, thinking for ever and ever about eternity, and Mhtoon Pah moved round in red velvet toe-slippers, pattering lightly as he went, for in spite of his bulk Mhtoon Pah had an almost soundless walk. Having gone over everything ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... hair, which she had always worn with a certain Greek simplicity, was parted at one side. Yet her face, with its regularity of feature, and small, thin, red-lipped mouth, was quite unchanged; and her velvety brown eyes were as beautiful and inscrutable as ever. ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... time, Mr. Bending," the man whose card had announced him as Richard Olcott. He was a rather average-sized man, with a fiftyish face, graying hair that was beginning to thin, and an expression like that of a friendly poker player—pleasant, but inscrutable. ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... cord, and these spread out in a multitude of thread-like filaments round the prismatic columns, and finally pass into all the cells. "A complete knowledge of all the mysteries which have been gradually unfolded from the days of Galvani to those of Faraday, and of many others which are still inscrutable to us, is exhibited in this structure." Well may Mr. Darwin say, "It is impossible to conceive by what steps these wondrous organs have been produced. We see the purpose—that a special apparatus should be prepared; but we have not the remotest notion ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... Scotch professor who was a brilliant and quick talker. Tamaitai took no part in the rapid thrust and parry of the talk, but sat silently looking from one to another with her great dark eyes. Their comment on her long afterwards was that she was the most inscrutable person they had ever met. As we drove home after the party I asked Tamaitai: 'What did you think of the talk?' There was a brief silence—then: 'I didn't understand a single word of it, they talked so fast,' said ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... probably have been cured long ago. But each generation, while freely confessing the sins of its fathers, has protested its own innocence and boasted of its own achievements, and then, with a pharisaic sense of rectitude, has complacently pointed to some inscrutable flaw in the Irish character as the key to the Irish problem. The generation which passed the Act of Union, oblivious of British pledges solemnly given and lightly broken, wondered what had become of the ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... which he felt the need. He was greatly tempted to go away at once to diminish his sufferings, but conquered this weakness. The next evening he passed at the chateau of M. des Rameures; and though his heart was bleeding, he piqued himself on presenting an unclouded brow and an inscrutable smile to Madame de Tecle. He announced the brief absence he ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... without seeing. It was strange to watch the adoration, the worship on that small face, and at the same time to behold the grotesqueness toward which it was directed. Bella was listening with her lowered eyes and tightened lips. She was interested in spite of herself; and Pete's inscrutable face followed the ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... better than to surprise the insolent young snob with a well-directed blow in his pretty face that would have sent him sprawling in the aisle. His hands fairly twitched to give him the lesson that he needed, but he only replied with a slight inscrutable smile in one corner of ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... noiselessly from the adjoining room. At the four dark, inscrutable faces the bewildered girl stared, her limbs numb with terror. Gravely the council told her she must come with them ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... broken, I have no hesitation in rending the veil and thus disclosing the key to the mystery, the explanation of the letter published in the morning papers two days ago; an extraordinary letter which increased, if possible, the mists and shadows that envelope this inscrutable drama. ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... unnecessary vehemence, he knew. He had admitted that—said he was sorry, as well as he could without withdrawing from his position. But he had been met by that most formidable of all weapons—a blank silence—an inscrutable face. Some sort of scene was inevitable, he knew. And he sat there waiting for it. She had been hurt. She was undoubtedly ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... name is proud to provide food and clothing for his children. That's what he's there for. But it does not require much keenness of vision to see that there are many parents unworthy of the name, and that, by the dark and inscrutable degrees of Heaven, such worthless individuals are often allowed to be parents of a numerous progeny. We must (i) inject into these wastrels the feeling of responsibility and (ii) prevent the children from dying of starvation. The first problem requires ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... a very grave and confidence-begetting person, who dealt out dubious hints and promises, and did not at all mind when Henderson found it necessary to repudiate as unauthorized anything that had been apparently said in his name. To be sure, this gave a general impression that Henderson was an inscrutable man to deal with, but at the same time it was confessed that his spoken word could be depended on. Anything written might, it is true, lead to litigation, and this gave rise to a saying in the Street that Henderson's word was better than ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... There was an inscrutable look in the blazing eyes of the approaching horseman, a compelling force in his broad shoulders as he rode ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... eyes dropped before that glance. There was an inscrutable look upon her face, but it was a look that would have told another woman that Mrs. Romaine was disappointed by the news which she had just heard. Caspar Brooke, being a man, ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... ring when Link arrived at the narrow opening. The steward was sitting at the table as before. At the corner of the ring, alongside the platform, stood a man in tweeds, unlighted pipe in mouth, half-shut shrewd eyes studying the dogs as they filed in through the gap in the ropes. The inscrutable eyes flickered ever so little at sight of Chum, but at once ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... was a narrow vista of passing men and vehicles. Harrison stood there with the handle of the door in his hand. There was no farewell between him and his departing visitor, no sign of intelligence in his inscrutable face. ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... two or three years ago. He had read lengthy newspaper accounts of the wild and magnificent welcome accorded to the first soldiers to return to New York. How strange the contrast! But that was long ago—past history—buried under the immense and hurried and inscrutable changes of a nation. Lane divined that, as he felt the mighty resistless throb of the great city. His third and strongest impression concerned the women he met and passed on the streets. Their lips and cheeks were rouged. Their dresses ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... dwelt in Bacadou's farmhouse, sharing the breath and the bread of its inhabitants; and the priest of the Ploumar parish had great cause for congratulation. He called upon the rich landowner, the Marquis de Chavanes, on purpose to deliver himself with joyful unction of solemn platitudes about the inscrutable ways of Providence. In the vast dimness of the curtained drawing-room, the little man, resembling a black bolster, leaned towards a couch, his hat on his knees, and gesticulated with a fat hand at ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... knew of her desperate act; 'twas written on his face, she saw the pain upon it; and yet, how could it be? These thoughts flashed through Katherine's brain, and she tried to move from him, but an inscrutable presence held her, and she felt she must not leave him, perhaps forever, with that face so full of pain, and she spoke out a word she had never used before and one which touched his Lordship as nothing ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... play by Mr. Jerome after our bitter experience of his Rowena in Search of a Father. To say that his present work is an improvement upon his last would be to damn it with a fainter praise than it deserves. The Great Gamble is a strange and inscrutable medley, but it has its exhilarating moments, and the humour of its dialogue, though it is mitigated by the Professor's contributions, is worthy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... be the better way, Miguel." She bent upon him an inscrutable smile but in the depths of her brown eyes ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... ye think I'm a-lyin' to ye," he said. "Y'u kin git even with me now. But I want to tell ye fust"—the girl had caught the muzzle of the gun convulsively, and was bending over it, her eyes burning, her face inscrutable—"hit was a fa'r fight betwixt us, 'n' I whooped him. He got his gun then, 'n' would 'a' killed me ag'in' his oath ef he hadn't been shot fust. Hit's so, too, 'bout the crosses. I made 'em; they're right thar on that gun; but whut could I do with mam a-standin' right thar ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... with thy daughter," he said, as one introducing a topic which may prove of interest. Eudemius turned his inscrutable eyes ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... where people have been known to barter wives and children for a cupful of the liquid element. Of the inhabitants of Nepenthe it must be said to their credit that they endure their lot with equanimity, and even cheerfulness. Their wine costs nothing. Why grumble at the inscrutable ways of Providence? Why be thirsty, why be sober, when you can get as drunk as a lord for ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... the great limbed captains with their broad spears beyond, reminding her in their plumes and attitudes of some picture that she had seen of Roman gladiators about to die. Lastly she looked at the delicately shaped Noie by her side, with her sweet, inscrutable face, the woman whose parents and kin this outcast had brought to a bloody death, the woman whom to forward his base ends he had vilely striven to murder. Slowly she looked at them all and at him, ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... the Clyde on Thursday night, and early on the Friday forenoon we took in our last batch of emigrants at Lough Foyle, in Ireland, and said farewell to Europe. The company was now complete, and began to draw together, by inscrutable magnetisms, upon the decks. There were Scots and Irish in plenty, a few English, a few Americans, a good handful of Scandinavians, a German or two, and one Russian; all now belonging for ten days to one small iron country ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cannot say positively; but this was the inference we drew from the statements of the German officers who took part in the proceeding. As for the acting burgomaster, he stood through the scene silent and inscrutable, saying nothing at all. Possibly he did not understand; the conversation—or that part of it which concerned us—was carried on exclusively in English. His face, as he bowed to accept the certified warrant for the flour, gave us no hint ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... the bedroom. They feel an ignoble drawing to follow him, but do not yield to it. When he returns his face is inscrutable.) ...
— Quality Street - A Comedy • J. M. Barrie
... my eyes are a burthen, Now unwillingly closed, now open and aching with darkness. O! what a life is the eye! what a strange and inscrutable essence! Him that is utterly blind, nor glimpses the fire that warms him; Him that never beheld the swelling breast of his mother; 30 Him that smiled in his gladness as a babe that smiles in its slumber; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... pinched, yet not pointed, showed scarcely any nostril, and might as well have been made of wood, for any meaning it betrayed. Her eyebrows were short, wide, rugged, and irregular, though very black; the cast-down eyes, of course, so far inscrutable. ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... of that song the English-speaking races will assuredly unite. What made this world we know not; the principle of life is inscrutable and will for ever be; but we know that Earth is yet on the up-grade of existence, the mountain-top of man's life not reached, that many centuries of growth are yet in front of us before Nature begins to chill this planet till it swims, at ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... is an inscrutable mystery to the other. Each soul is veiled to every other soul, and ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... the face before him, but the sphinx is not more inscrutable. Yet he feels that from some cause Wilmarth hates him, and therein he is right. To be thwarted and outgeneralled is what this black-browed man can illy bear. To receive a certain sum of money and see his rival go on to success, ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... himself seated opposite Mr. Fossell, with Miss Gabriel and Mr. Rogers for opponents—Miss Gabriel on his left. He prepared to enjoy himself, for whist meant silence, and he could have chosen no better partner than Mr. Fossell, who played a sound game, and with a perfectly inscrutable face. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... mournful expression. Lady Annabel might have read a slight sentiment of affectionate reproach in the demeanour of her daughter when she bade her farewell. Whatever might be the consciousness of the mother, she was successful in concealing her impression. Very kind, but calm and inscrutable, Lady Annabel, having given directions for postponing the dinner-hour, embraced her child and entered ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... not unaware of the source of their blessings. From a remote date they speculated on their mysterious river. They deified it under the name of Hapi, "the Hidden," they declared that "his abode was not known;" that he was an inscrutable god, that none could tell his origin: they acknowledged him as the giver of all good things, and especially of the fruits of ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... key we want. A girl who died some thirty years ago! A father who disappeared! A brother who, from being a Cadwalader, has become an Adams! An Eva whose name, as well as that of the long-buried Evelyn, was to be heard in constant repetition in the place where the murdered Felix lay with those inscrutable lines in his own writing, clinched between his teeth! It is a snarl, a perfect snarl, of which we have as yet failed to pull the right thread. But we'll get hold of it yet. I'm not going to be baffled in my old age by difficulties I would have laughed at ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... once was a person of Benin, Who wore clothes not fit to be seen in; When told that he shouldn't, He replied, "Gumscrumrudent!" A word of inscrutable meanin'. ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... heaven worked out its designs by means often inscrutable to human comprehension: and he blamed himself for having doubted the truth of the vision. Feelings of joy therefore accompanied the reassurance of his soul; and, having poured forth his thanksgivings for the merciful intervention ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... understanding, only wondering (perhaps) to find itself so groomed and garlanded, so flattered and adored. She had hardly known Victor before she was given to him in marriage by Imperial ukase ... to get rid of her, probably, for some inscrutable reason related to the mysterious circumstances of ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... not tell whether this shot had reached the mark, for though Clarke's eyes were steadily fixed on him the man's face was inscrutable. ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss |
