"Unfathomable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Profundity unfathomable sat on the negro's sable brow as he replied, "Massa Nadgel, I don't bery well know what ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... our life is Memory: We walk upon a narrow path between Two gulfs—what is to be, and what has been, Led by a guide whose name is Destiny; Beyond is sightless gloom and mystery, From whose unfathomable depths we glean Chaotic hopes and terrors, dimly-seen ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... is no longer visible. We can see nothing except the ropes which suspend us, and these are only visible for a few feet above our heads, when they lose themselves in the fog. We are alone with our wickerwork house in an unfathomable vault. ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... came to a ledge beneath which the sheer cliff dropped away into unfathomable snowy depths. After short excursions to right and left I discovered that a section of the cliff had split off and dropped into the canyon, leaving only sheer rock walls that offered nothing in the way ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... she had bestowed on him; of the silent question spoken by her lovely shy eyes. He guessed it to be: "Shall I really be happy once more? Dare I hope it? Is it indeed you who will bring me happiness?" Out of an unfathomable abyss of doubt and misery she appealed to ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... the dinginess of the new existence. Her faith burned dim; her trust in God himself was even a little shaken. She wondered why such a severe punishment was sent to her; why she, who wrote so little, should get a disease brought on by writing. It seemed all incomprehensible, unfathomable, too dark for any ordinary words, or any ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... the ancient times the old bishop's palace, where Beldenak lived!" said Sophie. "Just opposite to the river is the bell-well, where a bell flew out of St. Albani's tower. The well is unfathomable. Whenever rich people in Odense die, it rings down ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... perhaps it was all imagination—and he did not see that thing lurking in the depths of his sister-in-law's cold, unfathomable eyes that he thought he did. And yet her testimony against Rebecca Nurse, reads to us, even at this late day, with all the charity that we are disposed to exercise towards things so long ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... happen that so beautiful and inoffensive a being should taste, even to its dregs, the bitterest unhappiness? Oh, there must indeed be a mysterious, unfathomable meaning in the decrees of Providence which is beyond the comprehension of man; for no one on earth less deserved or needed "the uses of adversity" than Dumb Kate. Love, the mighty and lawless passion, came into the sanctuary of the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... adaptation to the circumstances of the times and persons to whom they were originally delivered, are things inexplicable—concealed germs of an infinite development, reserved for future ages to unfold."[259] To the man of learning and reflection, this progressive fullness, and unfathomable depth of the Scripture, is a most conclusive proof that it was dictated by Him in whom are hid all the treasures of ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... in light From her own beauty: deep her eyes as are Two openings of unfathomable night Seen through a temple's cloven roof; her hair Dark; the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight, Picturing her form. Her soft smiles shone afar; And her low voice was heard like love, and drew All living things towards this wonder new. ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... is past and gone—an age that flourished long before men recorded history. His best efforts seem to spring out of a heart that forgot all precedent, and arose, Venus-like, perfect and complete, from the unfathomable Sea of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... this time-world, with its Florences and banishments, flutters as an unreal shadow." Dante's heart, long filled with this, brooding over it in speechless thought and awe, bursts forth at length into "mystic unfathomable song," and this, his "DIVINE COMEDY" (q. v.), the most remarkable of all modern Books, is the result. He died after finishing it, not yet very old, at the age of 56. He lies buried in his death-city Ravenna, "shutout from my native ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... tinged with orange and yellow. Overwhelmingly luminous, monstrously large, it filled a large portion of the visible sky, a sight that brought millions of tourists to the Jovian moons each year, a sight that even the old-timers still must stare at, drawn by some unfathomable fascination. ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... the song of our love-life," murmured Eloise. "How full of memories it is—what tenderness and harmony—and oh! what peace it brings! But tell me, Master, what means this minor chord,—this undertone of sadness and of pathos that flows like a deep, unfathomable current throughout it all, and wailing, weaves itself about thy theme of love and happiness with its weird ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... profusion. It retained all "the cumbrous charge of a Gothic establishment," though all its usage and accommodation had "shrunk into the polished littleness of modern elegance." The outlay was enormous. The expenditure on the court tables only was a thing unfathomable. Waste was the rule in every branch of it. There was an office for the Great Wardrobe, another office of the Robes, a third of the Groom of the Stole. For these three useless offices there were three useless treasurers. They all laid a heavy burden on the ...
— Burke • John Morley
... of the mountain, which cast a shadow on the brilliant irradiation of the opposite slope. Some petrified shrubs ran fantastically here and there. Fishes got up under our feet like birds in the long grass. The massive rocks were rent with impenetrable fractures, deep grottos, and unfathomable holes, at the bottom of which formidable creatures might be heard moving. My blood curdled when I saw enormous antennae blocking my road, or some frightful claw closing with a noise in the shadow of some cavity. Millions of luminous spots shone brightly in the midst of the ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... no more unfathomable mystery in the history of mediaeval Rome than the origin and power of Theodora, whose name first appears in the year 914, as Lady Senatress and absolute mistress of the city. The chronicler Luitprand, who is almost the only authority for this period, heaps abuse upon ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... gone, with only pity to cover him, unloved, unloving, unbemoaned, save by the Quaker girl whose true spirit he had hurt, save by the wife whom he had cruelly wronged and tortured; and pity was the thing that moved them both, unfathomable and almost maternal, in that sense of motherhood which, in spite of love or passion, is behind both, behind all, in every ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... cloaks of spruce and hemlock on the shoulders of the hills grew dark with wintry foliage. Keene's transitions of mood became more frequent and more extreme. The gulf of isolation that divided him from us when the black days came seemed wider and more unfathomable. Dorothy and John Graham were thrown more constantly together. Keene appeared to encourage their companionship. He watched them curiously, sometimes, not as if he were jealous, but rather as if he were interested in some delicate experiment. At other times he would be ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... of half a century rested heavily on his soul; in a few seconds more, unless he consented to give up a portion of his basely acquired wealth, he had every reason to fear that soul would be ushered into a dark and unfathomable eternity. No wonder, then, that ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... for high compliments from you and Charlotte on this very sage instance of my unfathomable, incomprehensible wisdom. Talking of Charlotte, I must tell her that I have, to the best of my power, paid her a poetic compliment, now completed. The air is admirable: true old Highland. It was the tune of a Gaelic song, which an Inverness lady ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... was succeeded by Germanicus' unworthy son, Caligula. After a few days of hypocrisy on the part of the emperor, and credulous hope on that of the people, they found a madman let loose to take the place of an unfathomable and gloomy tyrant. Caligula was much taken up with Gaul, plundering it and giving free rein in it to his frenzies, by turns disgusting or ridiculous. In a short and fruitless campaign on the banks of the Rhine, he had made too few prisoners for ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Darkness. The Tuat was not a place of happiness, judging from the description of it in the PER-T EM HRU, or Book of the Dead. When Ani the scribe arrived there he said, "What is this to which I have come? There is neither water nor air here, its depth is unfathomable, it is as dark as the darkest night, and men wander about here helplessly. A man cannot live here and be satisfied, and he cannot gratify the cravings of affection" (Chapter CLXXV). In the Tuat there was neither ...
— The Book of the Dead • E. A. Wallis Budge
... feather!" Sam said, with his unfathomable smile, when Mac flared out at him, and again the missus appeared ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... Beauty, of which things on earth are only dim copies.... I have seen the future, the destinies of the human race; I have spoken to the mighty, the lofty, and the pure; I have learnt the wise Order which guides the apparent great disorder; I trembled at the unfathomable secret of the Universe of which I had a glimmering perception, and I felt the immensity of my ignorance. Plato, you shall write what I have seen. You shall teach the children of men to estimate ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... remained calm and serene, speaking of himself daily as a great sinner, who had been overwhelmed with benefits, and declaring, that he had never in all his life before, had such delightful views of the unfathomable love and infinite condescension of the Saviour, as were now daily opening before him. "Oh, the love of Christ! the love of Christ!" he would suddenly exclaim, while his eye kindled, and the tears chased each other down his cheeks, "we cannot understand it now—but ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... economical; not profuse, but at the same time not niggardly; in all matters precise. All the world had been wearied by the frequent proofs which his father had given of his untrustworthiness, and by the unfathomable mystery in which he enveloped his ever-wavering intentions: they expected from the son more openness, uprightness, and consistency. They asked if he would not also be more decidedly Protestant. He showed, at least ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... at heart was nothing more or less than an unfathomable Nature, a Natura naturans of infinite resource, connected with which, as a microcosm, is man, who has also within him infinite powers, which he can learn to master by cultivating the will, which must be begun at least by the aid of sleep, ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... and sparkle like a true palace of the East. For once all is possible; nothing lies beyond our reach. And as we talk, and she listens, we two seem to be floating off into an empyrean of our own like the summer clouds above our heads, as they sail dreamily on into the far-away depths of the unfathomable sky. ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... wonder that under the pressure of this prodigious research, the lightning lends its wings to knowledge, that the subjugated earth hastens to reveal its deep arcana to mortal eyes, and that planet after planet should come forth out of the unfathomable abyss of space, and submit to be measured, and weighed, and chronicled, as their older sisters have been. But this is going too far even for the charity which "believeth all things." Those who have never been initiated into the penetralia of these institutions, know enough ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... of the Ring, considered as a whole, is Wotan. He is absolute lord of earth and heaven as long as his luck lasts. The luck lasts no longer than is determined, not by the hours, but by some mysterious something, some unfathomable mystery of a power, behind the hours. When the hour strikes, his stately home in the heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll, shall be consumed in flames; Wotan and the minor gods shall perish; a new start ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... dross, Cannot survey, with fix'd and steady eye, The dim uncertain gulf, which now the muse, Adventurous, would explore; but dizzy grown, He topples down the abyss.—If he would scan The fearful chasm, and catch a transient glimpse Of its unfathomable depths, that so His mind may turn with double joy to God, His only certainty and resting place; He must put off awhile this mortal vest, And learn to follow, without giddiness, To heights where all is vision, and surprise, And vague conjecture.—He must waste by night ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... mother, next in the list to Barney's name had always come Margaret's. She was like Barney in so many ways; strong like Barney in her relentless devotion to duty; she had Barney's fine sense of honour, of righteousness, and Barney's superb courage, and, more than anything else, the same unfathomable heart of love. One could never get to the bottom of it. No matter what the drain, there would ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... beneath thy life the virtue shine That deep within the star's eye opes its day; I clutch the gorgeous thoughts thou throw'st away From the profound unfathomable mine, And with them this mean common hour do twine, As glassy waters on the dry beach play. And I were rich as night, them to combine With, my poor store, and warm me with thy ray. From the fixed answer of those dateless eyes I meet bold ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... to take the awful leap, And fall, with hoarse and sullen roar, Into th' unfathomable deep, Which rolleth on, from ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... captured, after all, was only a small part of a very large circle made up of his family—in most cases dependent on him for support—and of his friends, even the most vivid imagination fails to give proper expression in words of the sum total of unfathomable misery, broken hearts, spoiled lives, and destroyed hopes that are represented in these ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... of the creature. God does not make the life divine all at once, but by degrees. Then, as I have said, He enlarges the capacity of the soul, and can continually deify it more and more, God being an unfathomable depth. ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... now to The Mastersingers, an old idea of Wagner's. The music was completed at Triebschen. Here is nothing of the tension, burning passion, and unfathomable depth of Tristan, but a pretty love-story, with some comedy and more than a little of very broad farce. In it Wagner determined to satirize the musical pedants, and he did so with considerable acerbity. But it is not to see his enemies roughly handled that ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... ideas, spiritual truths, or truth-powers,—not of notions and conceptions, the manufacture of the understanding,—is therefore 'simplex et nuda', that is, immediate; like the clear blue heaven of Italy, deep and transparent, an ocean unfathomable in its depth, and yet ground all the way. Still as meditation soars upwards, it meets the arched firmament with all its suspended lamps of light. O, let not the 'simplex et nuda' of Gregory be perverted to the Socinian, 'plain and easy for the meanest understandings!' ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... a moment's hesitation, nor did he now though the path was dangerously narrow and rocky, overhanging unfathomable abysses of dark water. But Christina was in mortal terror, both for herself and Andrew. She did not dare to call his name, lest, in the sudden awakening he might miss his precarious foothold, and fall to unavoidable death. She found it almost impossible to follow him nor indeed in her ordinary ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... a sort of vague impression that capital was what you put into a bank, and interest was what you took out; while the difference between the par value of a security and the price you could get for it on the market, would have been to him a hopelessly unfathomable mystery. Aunt Charlotte, therefore, was very wise in abstaining from any reference, in conversation, to the great enterprise for extracting gold from sea-water, in which she hoped to purchase shares; for one ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... looked into the fire. To them both the Angel of Death seemed to have paused outside the door, and in the stillness they waited for his knock. Only Courant was indifferent, staring at the wall with eyes full of an unfathomable unconcern. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... in so far as he has appropriated the full richness of experience which is offered to him, man will and should find himself, as it were, flung to and fro between action and contemplation. Between the call to transcendence, to a simple self-loss in the unfathomable and adorable life of God, and the call to a full, rich and various actualization of personal life, in the energetic strivings of a fellow worker with Him: between the soul's profound sense of transcendent love, and its felt possession of and ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... humanity, even to the extent of a complete union between them. The ideal of the Christian life is a personal life of pure inwardness, and of an ethical character. He speaks of the "flow of inner life by means of which Christianity far surpasses all other religions," and of the "unfathomable depth and immeasurable hope which are contained in the ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... actually thinking was that Irene's eyes were the most unfathomable blue he ever looked into, as they met his with perfect frankness, and he was wondering if she were reading his present state of mind; but what he said was, "I think your sort of mind-reading is a good deal more interesting than the other," and he might ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... needless, I dare say, to observe further at this time than that the liberty which he has been pleased to allow himself in sporting with my character is little else than a comic entertainment, discovering at one view his passionate fondness for your friend, his inviolable love of truth, his unfathomable knowledge, and the masterly strokes of his wisdom in displaying it. You are heartily welcome to make use of any letter or letters which I may at any time have written to you; for although I keep no copies of epistles to my friends, nor can remember the contents of all of them, yet I am sensible ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... have voices: speak and perish. Art and Love speak—but their words must be Like sighings of illimitable forests, And waves of an unfathomable sea. ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... surfaces with straw and blankets, so that when they came in the morning the points of attack were as invulnerable as ever. In despair they buried both in one grave—the corporal undermost—without further efforts to attain a decent depth. As to six feet, it was quite unfathomable. They heaped all the stones they could loosen over the bodies, and the chaplain read prayers at last, after a 'week's preparation' and suspense, 'snow to snow, and ice to ice.' That night a herd of wolves came prowling by, and carried ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... a kind of man whom strife sets off, a middling good man in his way, perhaps, with a call to the sword whose justice he has never questioned. I have studied the philosophies; I have reflected on life—this unfathomable problem—and 'fore God I begin to doubt my very right to wear a breastplate against the poignard of fate. Dubiety plays ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... sitting with me at her mother's feet, sometimes so near that her dark, shining hair brushed against my cheek, and her fragrant breath came on my face; and when she caressed my hand, and gazed full at me with those dear eyes that had no shadow of regret or anxiety in them, but only unfathomable love, I could imagine that our union was already complete, that she ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... and deepened that elegant gentleman became more and more disgusted. Not that he lacked personal courage, but, as he often remarked, it was the "horrid style of living" that he could not endure. He could not find an aesthetic element in the blinding dust or unfathomable mud of Virginia. ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... of remorse, heightened by fear, until he had met Amalia, and after that it had been one unremitting strife between love and duty—delight in her mind, in her touch, in her every movement, and in his own soul despair unfathomable. Now at last it was to end in public exposure, imprisonment, disgrace. A peculiar apathy of peace seemed to envelop him. There was no longer hope to entice, no further struggle to be waged against the terror of fear, or the joy of love, or the horror of remorse; all seemed gone from ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... various man! Thou palace of sight and sound, carrying in thy senses the morning, and the night, and the unfathomable galaxy; in thy brain the geometry of the city of God; in thy heart the power of love, and the realms of right and wrong. An individual man is a fruit which it costs all the foregoing ages to form and ripen. He is strong, not to do but to live; ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... virgin's heart,—this new, unfathomable, and divine emotion! Was it only the ordinary affection of the pulse and the fancy, of the eye to the Beautiful, of the ear to the Eloquent, or did it not justify the notion she herself conceived of it,—that it was born not of the ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... We are all sadly familiar with the possibilities of isolation between heart and heart. Poets have written with eloquent melancholy of our personalities as islands which lie indeed near together, but in an unfathomable ocean, over whose channels no boat has ever passed. Schools of pessimistic thought have positively affirmed that never really has one ego found its way into another through the hermetic seal of individuality; all ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... knew you would bid me carry you off; you would fasten your arms about my neck, lest I should go away without you.... Yesterday I had a longing to see the garden once more. It seems larger, deeper, more unfathomable than ever. I discovered there new scents, so sweetly aromatic that they brought tears into my eyes. In the avenues I found a rain of sunbeams that thrilled me with desire. The roses spoke to me of you. The bullfinches were amazed at seeing me alone. All the garden broke ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... lump of inert matter. All through the night terror had hold of me. I spent it dreaming of abysses. I was a prey to delirium. I felt myself grasped by the Professor's sinewy hand, dragged along, hurled down, shattered into little bits. I dropped down unfathomable precipices with the accelerating velocity of bodies falling through space. My life had become an endless fall. I awoke at five with shattered nerves, trembling and weary. I came downstairs. My uncle was at table, devouring his breakfast. I stared at him with horror ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... after another, about his readers' ears; to hurry him, in breathless phrases, hither and thither, back and forward, in time and space; to focus all this about his own momentary personality; and then, drawing the ground from under his feet, as if by some cataclysm of nature, to plunge him into the unfathomable abyss sown with enormous suns and systems, and among the inconceivable numbers and magnitudes and velocities of the heavenly bodies. So that he concludes by striking into us some sense of that disproportion of things which Shelley has illuminated by the ironical flash ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... go to after the war, when they would "agree on things again," for both of them looked forward to a time when love, springing like the phoenix from its own ashes, should be born again in its mysterious and unfathomable haunts. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... hereabouts object, I will not be so cruel or unreasonable as to hope they will admit it. At first, full of soft light, gentle and alluring, they brighten up to blaze upon you lustrously, and fascinate the gazer's dazzled glance: there are depths in them that tell of the unfathomable soul, heights in them that speak of the spirit's aspirations. It is gentleness and purity, no less than sensibility and passion, that look forth in such strange power from those windows of the mind: it is not the mere beautiful ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... him her full face as she looked up with her unfathomable eyes and tremulous red mouth. At the first glance he noticed a change in her—an awakening he would have called it—and for a minute he lost himself in a vague surmise as to the cause. Then all other consciousness was swept away by pure delight in the mere physical fact ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... remembrance that "thymos"—mind—meant originally blast. "The fathers of Greek theology gave to that Supreme Intelligence, which they instinctively recognized as above and ruling over the universe, the name of Zeus; but in doing so, they knew well that by Zeus they meant more than the sky. The unfathomable depth, the everlasting calm of the ethereal sky was to their minds an image of that Infinite Presence which overshadows all, and looks down on all. As the question perpetually recurred to their minds, 'Where is he who abideth forever?' they lifted up their eyes, and saw, as they thought, beyond ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... tomb shines through lustreless leaves. The black man, the donkeys, the women and children, the saint's dome, are all part of the inimitable Eastern scene in which inertia and agitation are so curiously combined, and a surface of shrill noise flickers over depths of such unfathomable silence. ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... the words—was it a hint of tenderness?—renewed her failing strength. She commanded herself and raised her head. She scarcely recognised in the steady, square-chinned man before her the impulsive, round-faced boy she had left. There was something unfathomable about him, a hint of greatness that affected ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... one's feeling for the Crustaceans—the crabs, lobsters, prawns, &c.—is different, it is not because one feels them to be less intelligent than fishes, but because their intelligence is altogether a mysterious, unfathomable, unmeasurable quantity. There's no saying what they don't know. There is no telling how much they can see. And the great puzzle is what they can be thinking of. For that the spiny lobsters are thinking, and "thinking very seriously about something," you can no ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... Brent's gaze upon her—that unfathomable look which made her uneasy, yet was somehow satisfying, too. He said, after a while, "Palmer is to give me his photograph. Will you give me yours?" He was smiling. "Both of ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... graceful adjustment. The head, however much it may contain of the actual look of Sophocles, must be idealized. To appreciate it properly one must remember that this poet, though he dealt with tragic themes, was not wont to brood over the sin and sorrow and unfathomable mystery of the world, but was serene in his temper and ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... success, and promised to assist him in prosecuting the war with vigour, the nation loudly exclaimed against the intolerable burdens and losses to which they were subjected by a foreign scheme of politics, which, like an unfathomable abyss, swallowed up the wealth and blood of the kingdom. All the king's endeavours to cover the disgusting side of his character had proved ineffectual; he was still dry, reserved, and forbidding; and the malcontents inveighed bitterly against ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... on the dark'ning wave, In measured sweep we go, Nor dread th' unfathomable grave, Which yawns below; For He is nigh who trod Amid the foaming spray, Whose billows own'd th' Incarnate God, And ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... a very old lady who seldom showed herself outside of her own room—so the Court testified—but who, when she did so, impressed the downstairs tenants as of unfathomable antiquity and a certain pictorial appearance, causing Uncle Mo to speak of her as an old picter, and Dave to misapprehend her name. For he always spoke of her as old Mrs. Picture. Mrs. Burr dawned upon the Court as a civil-spoken person who was away most part of the day, and who did not ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... a famine of the soul, to barrenness and death—here they are dealt with, in order to the more than prevention of the evil. And here, as ever, the remedy propounded is our Lord Jesus Christ, in His personal glory, in His majestic offices, in His unfathomable human sympathy, seen in perfect harmony of light with His ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... a grim time of it, these two months back; left alone, in coarse brown prison-dress, within his four bare walls at Custrin; in uninterrupted, unfathomable colloquy with the Destinies and the Necessities there. The King's stern orders must be fulfilled to the letter; the Crown-Prince is immured in that manner. At Berlin, there are the wildest rumors as to the state he has fallen into; "covered with rags and vermin, ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... and ivory beauty in the full flower of her glorious youth—and I thought of Joyce. I felt that it was like her to have fallen in love simply but passionately at the mere lifting of the finger of Fate. It was only another demonstration of the unfathomable mystery, or miracle, which love is. Joyce was lucky, indeed favored of the gods, to have touched the spring in this girl's heart which no other man could reach, and by the rarest of chances—her coming out to this remote corner of the world. Lucky Joyce! I knew him slightly—a straightforward ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... those peaks of midsummer snow were marching the highways of the air. Fascinated, almost stupefied, we watched their miracles of form and unfathomable glory. It was as though the stockades of earth had fallen away. Palisaded, cliff on radiant cliff, the spires of the Unseeable lay bare. Ever since childhood one has dreamed of scaling the bulwarks of the clouds, of riding the ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... fact. In the writings of John, in this old book I have here, you will find a few statements regarding these things which combine wondrous simplicity of language with marvelous, yes, unfathomable, depth of meaning. First, about life: in chapter one, verse four, of the gospel:—"in Him was life," being an evident allusion to the remarkable Genesis statement: "the Lord God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." Then, about love: in chapter four, ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... charges were, however, substantiated, and many of them were absurd or frivolous. Most likely, he has been sacrificed to a cabal, and his destruction makes a part of that system of policy, which, by agitating the minds of the people with suspicions of universal treason and unfathomable plots, leaves them no resource but implicit submission ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... eternities above, that descended to the eternities below: above was below, below was above, to the man stripped of gravitating body: depth was swallowed up in height insurmountable, height was swallowed up in depth unfathomable. Suddenly as thus they rode from infinite to infinite, suddenly as thus they tilted over abysmal worlds, a mighty cry arose—that systems more mysterious, that worlds more billowy,—other heights, and other depths,—were coming, were nearing, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... insuperable. Whence came matter if not from the creative word of God? To assign eternity to it is to invest it with an attribute that is Divine, and Pantheists carry such an explanation to its logical conclusion when they affirm that the universe is God. The existence of a single atom is an unfathomable mystery. Man cannot create or destroy even a particle of matter. How overwhelming, then, if we reject the simple statement of the Bible, is the mystery of the great universe, in whose extended space suns, planets, stars, and systems unceasingly revolve, ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... apparent scrap of a letter had dropped from some one's pocket during the fearful struggle, of which there were such ample evidences, was extremely probable; but what it related to, by whom it was written, or by whom dropped, were unfathomable mysteries. ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... window-curtains and the closed and curtained door folding him in from the world, and the agony of the music grieving his artistic soul to the core—as he played there he grew gradually happier and happier, and the zest of existence seemed to return. It was not only that he felt the elemental, unfathomable satisfaction of a male who is sheltered in solitude from a pack of women that have got on his nerves. There was also the more piquant assurance that he was behaving in a very sprightly manner. How ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... interested, and that just as carefully prepared plans were about to be consummated something happened—something mysterious which none of the cleverest agents of the governments had been able to solve. In some unfathomable way someone had discovered everything and stepped between and disarranged. No upheaval followed and of course Browne never won his title. They have never yet learned who saved that throne. Someone is working magic and getting away with it under the ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... counting his paces to keep his mind from wandering, and to his great joy he came suddenly on an opening in the wall which led towards welcome light, away from the horrors of that unfathomable pit. The woman waited for him there, looking ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... hair, worn plain and smooth, was black as night—wonderful hair. But still more wonderful were those great, dark, velvety eyes, deep and unfathomable. In them the tragedy of life was tumultuously visible, yet they were serene, self-possessed, even steady in their quiet simplicity. To describe her features is not an easy task. They were clear-cut, ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... or may sink into salt-water lots as did the Cities of the Plain; success may wait upon commerce and the arts, or desolation may cover the land; still, surviving all change, and profiting alike by prosperity and by calamity, the secret, unfathomable agents in all human enterprises will remain the BULLS ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... with a ruminating eye. That eye, with unfathomable perspicacity, seemed to pry into her empty pockets and pierce her penniless state. He did not ask her if she wanted to be driven there, but intimated with a shake of his grey head that Paddington was a goodish walk. Then he gave her directions for finding it—implicit and repeated directions, ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... arise? what strange and unfathomable cause could render necessary a conduct so mysterious? he knew not, indeed, that she herself wished it changed, but he could not be ignorant that his chance with almost any woman would at least ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... difficulty—our interview with the Great Actor. He was sitting in a deep arm-chair, so buried in his own thoughts that he was oblivious of our approach. On his knee before him lay a cabinet photograph of himself. His eyes seemed to be peering into it, as if seeking to fathom its unfathomable mystery. We had time to note that a beautiful carbon photogravure of himself stood on a table at his elbow, while a magnificent half-tone pastel of himself was suspended on a string from the ceiling. It was only when we had seated ourself in a chair and taken out our ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... forest, and overhead; the little circle of light within which I stood, seemed like a magician's ring, sacred and safe from evil spirits that filled the air around. It was as the speck of Time amid the ocean of Eternity — as Hope, bright and solitary in the midst of unfathomable darkness. There I felt safe and secure — but without — who might tell what spirits roamed abroad, melancholy and malignant? Peering into that dark boundary of forest, the eye vainly endeavoured to pierce the gloom. Fancy peopled its confines ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... discovery of Fenton. From the very first interview that he ever had with Corbet until that event, he could not avoid observing that there was a mystery in everything he did and said—something enigmatical—unfathomable, and that his looks, and the disagreeable expression which they occasionally assumed, were frequently so much at variance with his words, that it was an utter impossibility to draw anything like a certain inference from them. On the discovery of Fenton, the old ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... as yours, And heard a voice as kind as yours say "Come." I turned and went; and from that day I never Looked on the face of any other man. So much is known; so much effaced; the sin Cast like a plague-struck body to the sea, Deep, deep into the unfathomable pardon— (The Head bowed thrice, as the whole town attests). What more, then? To ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... as you view it; you feel as if you had had an electric shock; but as for knowing ten minutes later whether the eyes that so enthralled you were blue or black, or the locks that clustered halo-like about a forehead almost awful in its expression of weird, unfathomable power, were brown or red, you could not nor would you pretend to say. It was the character of the countenance itself that impressed you. You did not even know if this woman who might have been anything wonderful or grand you ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... to the top, where a plain opens itself about as many more in breadth, covered perpetually with very deep snow, and in the midst of that a great lake of unfathomable depth, from whence a river takes its rise, and tumbles over monstrous rocks quite down the other side of the mountain. The descent is six miles more, but infinitely more steep than the going up; and here the men perfectly ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... examined with greater minuteness the stellar regions in the Galactic tract, he discovered that by his method of star-gauging he was unable to define the complexity of structure and variety of arrangement which came under his observation; he also perceived that the star-depths are unfathomable, and discerned that beyond the reach of his telescope there existed systems and galaxies of stars situated at an appalling distance in the abysmal depths of space. Though the magnitude of that portion of ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... there was no way to sea except through the labyrinth of shoals amid which the ship lay. The navigation of a ship among coral rocks is at all times dangerous, for the lead gives no notice of their vicinity, their sides rising up like walls from almost unfathomable depths. ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... Jones or Brown could have fished out from the depths of the Incredible such a colossal manifestation of human folly as that man did. But it may be that I am under-estimating the alacrity of human folly in rising to the bait. No doubt I am. The greed of that absurd monster is incalculable, unfathomable, inconceivable. The career of de Barral demonstrates that it will rise to a naked hook. He didn't lure it with a fairy-tale. He hadn't enough imagination ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... on a high road looking down upon troops in battle, Castiglione or Rivoli, perhaps, his face thin and gaunt, his hair long and cut squarely across his forehead, the eyes deep, burning and unfathomable. It was so thoroughly alive that he believed it must be a reproduction of some great painting. He stood a long time, fascinated by this picture of the young republican general who rose like a meteor over Europe and ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... pretty sentimental tales, and cheap apologues, Mrs. Sand proclaims HER truth—that we need a new Messiah, and that the Christian religion is no more! O awful, awful name of God! Light unbearable! Mystery unfathomable! Vastness immeasurable!—Who are these who come forward to explain the mystery, and gaze unblinking into the depths of the light, and measure the immeasurable vastness to a hair? O name, that God's people of old did fear to utter! O light, that God's prophet would have perished had he seen! ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in fact, very beautiful—a long, firm, round body, youthful and strong, sheathed in a skin of cream and roses, lips that looked as though they had been used for nothing but the tranquil eating of ripe fruit, eyes of unfathomable serenity, and hair almost as soft and creamy as her shoulders and her finger-tips. Her beauty was not marred to Jim Greely's eyes by the fact that she was chewing gum. Amongst animals the only social poise, the only true ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... Fleda by another entered the breakfast-room, the one generally used in winter for all purposes. Mrs. Rossitur sat there alone in an easy-chair; and Fleda no sooner caught the outline of her figure than her heart sank at once to an unknown depth unknown before and unfathomable now. She was cowering over the fire her head sunk in her hands, so crouching, that the line of neck and shoulders instantly conveyed to Fleda the idea of fancied or felt degradation there was no escaping it how, whence, what, was all wild confusion. But the language of mere attitude ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... America, France and England the cocks had been crowing and now the first light of the dawn of a new day fell upon the figure of the man who in honor and understanding towered above his fellows. Now, for a moment, on the character of this man the unfathomable plan of God for future ages would seem ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... the grand material creation, of which we have learned so little here, but shall still be able, with even clearer vision, to perceive and comprehend the works of God, and, in the light of a nobler understanding, to adore the unfathomable wisdom which the Omnipotent Spirit has displayed in the arrangements of the boundless universe—the magnificent dwelling place of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... of Judge Troward's friends he will best and most gloriously be remembered as a teacher. In his magic mind the unfathomable revealed its depths and the illimitable its boundaries; metaphysics took on the simplicity of the ponderable, and man himself occupied a new and more dignified place in the Cosmos. Not only did he perceive clearly, but he also possessed that quality of mind even more rare ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... and calm, her young face scarce less white than the clinging folds of her tunic, her unfathomable eyes fixed upon the pathetic group at her feet: the weeping girl ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... drawings, once in the possession of Vasari, were certain designs by Verrocchio, faces of such impressive beauty that Leonardo in his boyhood copied them [124] many times. It is hard not to connect with these designs of the elder, by-past master, as with its germinal principle, the unfathomable smile, always with a touch of something sinister in it, which plays over all Leonardo's work. Besides, the picture is a portrait. From childhood we see this image defining itself on the fabric ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... unfathomable mines Of never-failing skill, He treasures up his bright designs And works his ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... think of that, fellows?" he exclaimed, in dismay when he had rammed the seven foot pole down until three fourths of its length had vanished in the unfathomable depths of ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... also, the conduct of Henry and his mother in these negotiations was marked by the same unfathomable duplicity. There was an appearance of cordiality on the surface; but there was deep plotting, and bargaining, and even deadly hostility lurking below. We have seen the efforts which Elizabeth's government had been ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to guess the rest. But of the Leopoldine nothing had been seen, and nothing was known. The Marie-Jeanne men—the last to have seen it on the 2d of August—said that she was to have gone on fishing farther towards the north; and beyond that the secret was unfathomable. ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... friend, that in benighted regions of the west, where the mud is of unfathomable and sublime depth, roads are made of round rough logs, arranged transversely side by side, and coated over in their pristine freshness with earth, turf, and whatsoever may come to hand, and then the rejoicing native calleth it a road, and straightway essayeth to ride ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the blue waves of the vast Atlantic, as if we were far above the earth. Nothing was there for the weary eye to rest upon but a dreary expanse of ocean and sky. All was still as death, save the hissing at the bows of the vessel, as she parted the unfathomable deep. The crew loitered upon the decks listlessly; and we, as palantines, huddled together around the mainmast, were whiling away the time in songs, or talking of the homes we had left behind, and future hopes ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... banks, found an opening high above the fringe of woods, and cast a shining glow upon her face, and touched her figure as with silver braid. Out of this light looked Fran's eyes as dark as deepest shadows, and out of the unfathomable depths of her eyes glided two tears as pure as their source ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... and the only way to be true to our Maker is to be loyal to ourselves. "O rich and various Man!" he cries, "thou palace of sight and sound, carrying in thy senses the morning and the night and the unfathomable galaxy; in thy brain the geometry of the city of God; in thy heart the bower of love and the ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... didn't seem like wood. The grain stood out in knee-high ridges in all directions to the limit of visibility. It was like a nightmare picture of a frozen bad-lands, split here and there by six-feet-broad, unfathomable chasms—which were the cracks ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... surroundings, is himself God. Akin to Vedantic mysticism is the Yoga system, which teaches extreme asceticism, retirement into solitude, fastings, nudity, mortification of the flesh, profound meditation on unfathomable mysteries, and the endless reiteration of magic words and phrases as the means of accelerating that ineffable fusion of God and man. The materialism of the Sankhya and the idealism of the Vedanta combine to provoke the reaction ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... the shore of the bay, there is a lake of considerable size and very great depth, and which apparently receives a very inadequate supply from the elevated land on which it is situated. The lake has no natural outlet, and the common opinion is that it is unfathomable, and that it is supplied with water by means of a subterranean communication with Lake Huron, or some other lake at the same level. This is, of course, extremely improbable, but there can be no doubt of its great depth, and ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Church was the sure communion of salvation and of saints, which rested on the forgiveness of sins mediated by baptism, and excluded everything unholy. It is not the Church, but God alone, that forgives sins, and, as a rule, indeed, this is only done through baptism, though, in virtue of his unfathomable grace, also now and then by special proclamations, the pardon coming into effect for repentant sinners, after death, in heaven. If Christendom readmitted gross sinners, it would anticipate the judgment of God, as it would thereby assure them of salvation. Hence it can only take back those who ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... man was more divine. In comparison our modern monotheism is cold, abstract, mechanical. Instead of a radiant Apollo, we have the law of gravitation. We have lost the many fair gods of old to enrich One who is remote, unfathomable, self-sufficient. ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... straight into the water; only daring little ferns and plants have a foothold on it; the lake is inaccessible from this direction. A narrow pathway winding in and out edged with water-reeds leads by it on the other side. This lake is said to be so deep that it is unfathomable; it is dark brown in colour, bitter and brackish to the taste. No fish can live in it. Learned men, called geologists, who study the crust of the earth, have decided that this region is not volcanic in origin as it would appear at first ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... him—what she knew not; but it would be done if she were strong enough. So she set herself to learn, and read, and trained her mind and temper more earnestly than ever, and waited in patience for God's good time. And now, behold, a black, unfathomable gulf of doubt and shame had opened between them, perhaps for ever. And a tumult arose in her soul, which cannot be, perhaps ought not to be, analysed in words; but which made her know too well, by her own crimson cheeks, that it ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... Cartier's eye unflinchingly. There was an unfathomable twinkle in Madam's that meant much or little. Madam was naturally merry. Nevertheless, Sue, for all her bravado, was worried. She changed ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... changed towards noon. Mont Blanc, as they say in its neighbourhood, "put on its cap and began to smoke its pipe," which, to speak more plainly, means that it is covered with clouds, and that the snow, driven upon it by a south-west wind, formed a long crest on its summit in the direction of the unfathomable precipices of the Brenva glaciers. This crest betrayed to imprudent tourists the route they would have taken, had they had the temerity to venture ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... Intellect, and the Intellect by the Supreme Soul. That Eternal One endued with Divinity is beheld by Yogins (by their mental eye). The Supreme Soul endued with four legs, called respectively Waking, Dream, profound Sleep, and Turiya, like unto a swan, treading above the unfathomable ocean of worldly affairs doth not put forth one leg that is hid deep. Unto him that beholdeth that leg (viz., Turiya) as put forth for the purpose of guiding the other three, both death and emancipation are the same. That Eternal One endued with Divinity ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... were the tumbled blocks and crags, Huge ridges and sharp juts of flinty peaks, Black caves, and masses of the grim, bald rock. The ethereal, unfathomable sky, Hung over him, the valley lay beneath, Dotted with yellow hayricks, that exhaled Sweet, healthy odors to the mountain-top. He breathed intoxicate the infinite air, And plucked the heather blossoms where they ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... perpetual humidity, a welcome escape from the heat and deadly malaria of the hot region with its "bilious fevers." Sometimes as he passes along the bases of the volcanic mountains, casting his eye "down some steep slope or almost unfathomable ravine on the margin of the road, he sees their depths glowing with the rich blooms and enameled vegetation of the tropics." This contrast arises from the height he has now gained above the ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... transparency of the celestial spaces presents itself in the presebt connexion. Light from stars at unfathomable distances reaches us in such quantity as to suggest that space itself is absolutely transparent, leaving open the question as to whether there is enough matter scattered through it to absorb a sensible part of the light in its journey ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... reach somewhere near noon; mine host dictates while his brother writes. Visitors continue coming in, and I am beginning to get a trifle impatient about starting; am beginning in fact to wish all their nonsensical ceremoniousness at the bottom of tho deep blue sea or some equally unfathomable quarter, when, at a signal from Mr. Vartarian himself, his brother and tho whole roomful of visitors rise simultaneously to their feet, and equally simultaneously put their hands on their respective stomachs, and, turning ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Rhoda jumped from the track, then stopped. There flashed across her inner vision the face of young Cartwell, debonair and dark, with unfathomable eyes; young Cartwell who had saved her life when the scorpion had stung her, who had spent hours trying to lead her back to health. Instantly she turned and ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... say, 'could So-and-so see in So-and-so to fall in love with?' This very inexplicability I take to be the sign and seal of a profound importance. An instinct so conditioned, so curious, so vague, so unfathomable, as we may guess by analogy with all other instincts, must be Nature's guiding voice within us, speaking for the good of the human race in ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... questions directed to that end, which he asked himself, remained unanswered, and for this reason he was desirous of seeing whether the essence might not perhaps enable others to grasp the real nature of that which until then had been unfathomable by man. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... - That I should call myself a man of letters, and land myself in such unfathomable ambiguities! No, my dear Locker, I did not want a cheque; and in my ignorance of business, which is greater even than my ignorance of literature, I have taken the liberty of drawing a pen through the document and returning it; ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... guard him from errors he might learn, I furnish his mind with truths only. Reason and judgment enter slowly; prejudices crowd in; and he must be preserved from these last. Yet if you consider science in itself, you launch upon an unfathomable and boundless sea, full of unavoidable dangers. When I see a man carried away by his love for knowledge, hastening from one alluring science to another, without knowing where to stop, I think I see a child gathering shells upon the seashore. At first he loads ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... bull, and he wrenched his sword from the hand of the serving-man that carried it, and plucked its blade from its house. Very plainly he must have seen that his damnable plan had miscarried, and that in some unfathomable manner the men he had devoted to destruction, and of all these men most notably Dante, had escaped the fate he had arranged for them. Messer Dante, still holding Beatrice in his arms, had his sword drawn, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of its creed—one God, one prophet, one book—commends Mohammedanism to the minds of many. But simplicity is not a foible of the religious mind of India. It has always craved the complex, the mystical, and the unfathomable. It delights in inconsistencies, and indulges freely in the irreconcilable mysteries of faith. Hinduism, being the child of the Hindu mind, abounds in tropical exuberance of spiritual exercise and "amusements," which seem childish and inane to ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... throne at Naples to seize on power at Paris while the Emperor was engulfed in the Spanish quagmire? A story ran that Fouche had relays of horses ready between Naples and Paris for this enterprise.[206] But where Fouche and Talleyrand are concerned, truth lurks at the bottom of an unfathomable well. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... earthquakes which mark its crises. His birth is supernatural and had he willed it he could have lived until the end of the present Kalpa.[171] So, too, the nature of a Buddha when he is released from form, that is after death, is deep and unfathomable as the ocean.[172] The Kathavatthu condemns the ideas (thus showing that they existed) that Buddhas are born in all quarters of the universe, that the Buddha was superhuman in the ordinary affairs of life, that he was not really born in the world ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... sinking into a chair, is soon deep in the unfathomable mysteries of silks and satins, tulle ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... monotonously along. Then Charley's lagging imagination quickened sufficiently to suggest a ruse. Peter Boyelen, a new patrolman and one unknown to the fisher-folk, happened to arrive in Benicia, and we took him into our plan. We were as secret as possible about it, but in some unfathomable way the friends ashore got word to the beleaguered Italians ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... life within him had the fierce beat of supreme moments. Near by, the eddies sighed along the reefs, the water soughed amongst the stones, clung round the rocks with tragic murmurs that resembled promises, good-byes, or prayers. From the unfathomable distances of the night came the booming of the swell assaulting the seaward face of the Shallows. He felt the woman's nearness with such intensity that he heard nothing. . . . Then suddenly he thought ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... am on the platform, which shakes as the train travels. Amid the unfathomable darkness which envelops the Kara Koum, I experience the feeling of a night at sea ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... deep and perilous matter, Miriam," replied Kenyon. "I dare not follow you into the unfathomable ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a cry from another sphere. To those of us who once experienced the still and pitiless cold, a cry terribly suggestive of the horror-charged gloom, of the icy silence as unbroken as that of unfathomable deeps, of the stern and uncompromising individuality of a ...
— Out of the North • Howard V. Sutherland
... a good view, and sighed with admiration at the scene—there lay before me a deep, almost circular sheet or water, about thirty yards across. Directly beneath me I could see the rocky bottom; fifty feet further out towards the centre it was of unfathomable blueness. On the opposite side a tree of enormous girth had fallen, long years before, yet it was still growing, for some of its mighty roots were embedded in the rich red soil ...
— "Martin Of Nitendi"; and The River Of Dreams - 1901 • Louis Becke
... nature. Would you ask more?—you can learn nothing: whether it be eternal—whether it compel us, its creatures, to new careers after that darkness which we call death—we cannot tell. There leave we this ancient, unseen, unfathomable power, and come to that which, to our eyes, is the great minister of its functions. This we can task more, from this we can learn more: its evidence is around us—its name is NATURE. The error of the sages has been to direct their researches to the ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... expedients, with dreams of one knows not what Caesarian socialism, like a Hydra dimly visible in a transparency of chaos. Hardly was he aware that he was fostering this hideous idea. When he needed it, he found it, armed and ready to serve him. His unfathomable brain had darkly nourished it. Abysses ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... to sustain the splendour. Bury all your books, when you feel the night of scepticism gathering around you—bury them all, powerful though you may have deemed their spells to illuminate the unfathomable—open your Bible, and all the spiritual world will be as ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... intentionally—he couldn't do that—but by his Quixotic fads and fancies; good fads, honest fads, but fads wholly impracticable in this jarring universe of clashing interests, where he who would swim must keep his own head steadily above water, and he who minds his neighbour must sink like lead to the unfathomable bottom. He will sink, I doubt not, poor little Miss Butterfly; he will sink inevitably, and drag you down with him, down, down, down to immeasurable depths of poverty and despair. Oh, my poor little butterfly, I'm sorry for you, and sorry for myself. It was a pretty dream, and ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... death of Semele [45] is a sort of ideal or type of this peculiar claim on human pity, as the descent of Persephone into Hades, of all human pity over the early death of women. Accordingly, his triumph being now consummated, he descends into Hades, through the unfathomable Alcyonian lake, according to the most central version of the legend, to bring her up from thence; and that Hermes, the shadowy conductor of souls, is constantly associated with Dionysus, in the story of his ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... honour, were suppressed and insidiously forbidden. We were taught to be spies upon each other, to cringe servilely to our superiors, and to deal treacherously with such as were beneath us. Hypocrisy—innate, unfathomable hypocrisy—was instilled into our minds so cunningly that we did not recognise it. Every movement of the head or hands, every glance of the eyes, and every word from the lips was to be the outcome—not of our own hearts—but of a law ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... some cases the quarried ore yields from 50 to 70, and even as much as 90 per cent of iron. The Dannemora Mine is a vast quarry open to the sky. When you come near it the place looks like a vast deep pit, with an unfathomable bottom. Ghostlike, weird-looking pinnacles of rocks stand out from its profound depths; but beyond these you see nothing but wreaths of smoke curling up from below. The tortuous chasm in the earth, caused by the ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... onward nor throw it off. She fell at length into a slumber filled with troubled dreams. She was in a sandy wilderness, carrying a pitcher of clear, cold water, and though dying of thirst she would not drink, but perversely poured it upon the ground. She was falling down into unfathomable abysses and pushed aside the only hand stretched out to save her. She was drowning in deep water and she saw Le Gardeur buffeting the waves to rescue her but she wrenched herself out of his grasp. She would not be saved, and was lost! Her couch was surrounded ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... indignant ebullition of my own blood, that she ought this outrageous affirmation of what struck me as the intensity of masculine egotism. It centred everything in itself, and deprived woman of her very soul, her inexpressible and unfathomable all, to make it a mere incident in the great sum of man. Hollingsworth had boldly uttered what he, and millions of despots like him, really felt. Without intending it, he had disclosed the wellspring of all these troubled ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... intensity that goes deeper than daydreaming, although it admits distant kinship. Through what twilight and shadows do such men climb until night and star-dust are about them! Theirs is the dizzy exaltation of him who mounts above the world. Alas, in me is no such unfathomable mystery. I but trick myself. Yet I have my moments. These stones that I carry on the mountain, what of them? On what windy ridge do I build my castle? It is shrill and bleak, they say, on the topmost peaks of the Delectable Mountains, ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... brown, he noticed, unusual and interesting eyes, but by contrast with the clear deeps of Mary's eyes they seemed like those of some beautiful wild beast. He could not penetrate a thousandth part of a hair line beyond the exterior shine of her glance. The woman's soul was in the unfathomable shadow beneath. ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... fine tradition, which British captains always live up to, that in case of any accident happening to the ship the captain must be the last man to quit her. Innumerable captains indeed have preferred to go down into the unfathomable depths with their ships sooner than leave them ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... the soul of Blake. Leaning over the balcony railing, drinking in the music of M. Cartel, more than a little of heaven opened to him; a unique emotion thrilled him—a consciousness of sublimity, a sense of being part of some unfathomable yet perfect scheme. The music wove its story; the lovers became one with his own existence, as he himself was one with the stars above him and the lights below. He followed every note, and in his own brain was spun the subtle thread that bound Julian and Louise; his own fancy ran the gamut of ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... not troubled by Bourbon plotters; and doubtless the skill with which his agents had nursed this silly plot and sought to entangle all waverers did far more than the strokes of the guillotine to procure his future immunity. Men trembled before a union of immeasurable power with unfathomable craft such as recalled the days of ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... while she says in quick, hoarse, spasmodic whispers). Never to see him again. Never! Never! (Puts her shawl over her head.) Never to see my children again either—never again. Never! Never!—Ah! the icy, black water—the unfathomable depths—If only it were over! He has got it now—now he is reading it. Good-bye, Torvald and my children! (She is about to rush out through the hall, when HELMER opens his door hurriedly and stands with an open letter in ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... folded up the letter again, and gave it into her hand with a cold bow. She was handing it to me—Oh, the unfathomable depth ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and jammed the span so that the Alpine rope had to be got out and used to pull Lashly to the surface again. Lashly says the crevasse was 50 feet deep and 8 feet across, in form U, showing that the word 'unfathomable' can rarely be applied. Lashly is 44 to-day and as hard as nails. His fall has not ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... the expression was not cheerful, or why a single touch of the artist's pencil should not brighten it into joyousness. But, in fact, it was the very saddest picture ever painted or conceived; it involved an unfathomable depth of sorrow, the sense of which came to the observer by a sort of intuition. It was a sorrow that removed this beautiful girl out of the sphere of humanity, and set her in a far-off region, the remoteness of which—while yet her face is so close before us—makes ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... containing a ship's compass. I had been from boyhood familiar with all these things, but I never tired of looking at them, especially at the albatross and the owl—the former so suggestive of Coleridge and the unfathomable depths of the far-away Indian Ocean, and the latter always leading my thoughts away back to the fierce-eyed Athene and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... lines) (ll. 1-2) Thestorides, full many things there are that mortals cannot sound; but there is nothing more unfathomable than the heart ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... of life than herself. They were very busy with the writings of notes and certain mysterious goings and comings of their own, and left me very much to my own devices. Their speech in my presence was full of unfathomable allusions. They were the sort of girls who will talk over and through an uninitiated stranger with the ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... with horrible morbid suggestions, devilish is what he calls them, which, but for being constantly held in check with the sternest effort of his nature, would have driven him mad. Oh, let the uncertain, unsound, unfathomable human heart be wisely and tenderly driven! And as there are things which with the unsound horse you dare not venture on at all, so with the fallen mind. You who know your own horse, know that you dare ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd |
