"Unintelligible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Church's treasure of indulgences did not consist of the merits of Christ, and that faith on the part of the recipient was necessary for the efficacy of the sacrament. With respect to the second point, the religious principles upon which Luther based his doctrine were altogether strange and unintelligible to the scholastic standpoint of Cajetan; mere tittering and laughter followed Luther's observations, and he was required to retract this thesis unconditionally. The first point settled the question ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... turning a corner, I came suddenly upon a little village green, around which some half dozen cottages were scattered at irregular distances. I directed my steps towards one of these, before which a 45crazy sign, rendered by age and exposure to the weather as delightfully vague and unintelligible as though it had come fresh from the brush of Turner himself, hung picturesquely from the branch of ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... to Transcribe the Chinese Character, or to put their Alphabet into our Letters, because the Words would be both Unintelligible, and very hard to Pronounce; and therefore, to avoid hard Words, and Hyroglyphicks, I'll translate them as well as ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... conjecture that the "inside" was all right. Judging from Peggy's crestfallen air, it was all wrong. The note was not written in Lucy's usual regular hand. The letters straggled, the lines zig-zagged across the page, and the name signed was almost an unintelligible scrawl. But Peggy thought less of these superficial matters than of the ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... summer evenings. He ran his own car, and was never so happy as when Mary was on the driver's seat beside him, where he could amuse her with the little news of the day, or repeat to her long and, to Mary, unintelligible business conversations in which he had ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... circumstances to which they applied at the time they were used, have been erected into prophecies, and made to bend to explanations at the will and whimsical conceits of sectaries, expounders, and commentators. Every thing unintelligible was prophetical, and every thing insignificant was typical. A blunder would have served for a prophecy; and a dish-clout for ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... associates it with the exercise of actual physical brutality on the part of the man. And she sees, in you, a reflection of her own sufferings and her own case. It's curious—to a student of human nature. And it explains, what is otherwise unintelligible—her overlooking her own instructions to the servant, and letting you into the house. ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... more eloquently depicted upon his face. The eyes widened, the features stiffened into a mask, the outstretched hand fell limply to his side. He opened his lips to say something, several things, but the words were unintelligible; a mere broken stammer of apology, as he wheeled round and walked ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... circle of masculine Goths who understand the patois of the gridiron, the diamond, and the padded ropes and prefer it to the language of civilization. But such diction is always limited in its range of acquaintances and followers. A current bit of slang in Memphis may be unintelligible in Pittsburg. A colloquial ephemeralism in a city may be undecipherable in the country districts twenty-five miles away. A large percentage of the athletic jargon of the sporting club and field is enigmatical to the uninitiated. And since a newspaper man writes for the world at large rather ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... has at least four marked dialects: Northern, spoken in Sutherland, part of Caithness, and Ross; Western, spoken in Inverness-shire and Argyle and in the Islands; and the rather broken-down dialects of Arran and of Perthshire, but the speakers of these are not very unintelligible to one another. Even Manx has a tendency to a “north side” and a “south side” dialect. Welsh has two fairly well marked dialects, of North Wales and South Wales, and the Welsh of Glamorgan, once the classical form of the language, before ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... to the dramatic system of the Hindus, the reader is referred to the notes appended to the present translation. It is hoped that they will be found sufficient to explain every allusion that might otherwise be unintelligible to the English reader. ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... which the flood of civilization is first isolating, then undermining, and at last overwhelming, and hiding from our view. They are (to change the figure) survivals of an earlier state of existence, unintelligible if regarded singly, made to render up their secret only by comparison with other survivals, and with examples of a like state of existence elsewhere. Taken collectively, they enable us to trace the evolution of civilization from ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... the movement of her lips and the sudden gesture of resolution that shook her frame, as though she were about to speak that word. But all at once she appeared stupefied and dumfounded, pronounced a few unintelligible syllables, and fell huddled into a chair, sobbing convulsively and uttering cries ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... decision of the more fortunate ones assembled within. More than one hand began pounding on the door, and we could hear cries of: "The train was behind time!" "Your clock is fast!" "You are cheating us; you want it all for yourselves!" "We will have the law on you!" and other bitter adjurations unintelligible to me from my ignorance of the circumstances which called ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... of being dumb, incoherent, unintelligible, foolish, inarticulate in a foreign land, for lack of words! It is unwise, I fear, to have at the outset too high an ideal either in grammar or accent. As our gondola passed one of the hotels this afternoon, we paused long enough to hear an intrepid lady converse with an Italian ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... there for, and thought it might be to wind the clock—of which he perceived that the only visible specimen had stopped. He knew that the southern races communicated with each other in the language of pantomime, and was mortified to find her shrugs and smiles so unintelligible. At length she returned with a lamp; and Archer, having meanwhile put together a phrase out of Dante and Petrarch, evoked the answer: "La signora e fuori; ma verra subito"; which he took to mean: "She's out—but ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... brain like the sound of a language which has seemed familiar at a distance, but on approaching is found to be unintelligible. He had come to talk to her of Lily—that was all! There had been a third at the feast she had spread for him, and that third had taken her own place. She tried to follow what he was saying, to cling to her own part in the talk—but it was all as meaningless as ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... in the strangers' gallery over night, and then to read the speeches, to which he has listened, in the newspapers next morning, can readily appreciate. Hazy ideas have become clear, mutilated and unintelligible sentences have been neatly and properly arranged, needless repetitions and tautological verbiage have disappeared; there is no sign of hesitation; hums and haws, and other inexpressible ejaculations, grunts, and interpolations find no place; the thread of an argument is shown where none was visible ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... devoir, the trite little anecdote of Alfred tending cakes in the herdsman's hut, to be related with amplifications. A singular affair most of the pupils made of it; brevity was what they had chiefly studied; the majority of the narratives were perfectly unintelligible; those of Sylvie and Leonie Ledru alone pretended to anything like sense and connection. Eulalie, indeed, had hit, upon a clever expedient for at once ensuring accuracy and saving trouble; she had obtained access somehow to an abridged history ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... of a siren, unintelligible shouts from the steamer's bridge, a churning of propellers; foam; a waft of black smoke—then silence, the white, clammy veil again about us, and only the muffled throb of the liner's reversed engines ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... Pavlovna had made on him, he himself proposed to introduce him to her, adding that he was like one of the family with them; that the general was not at all proud, and the mother was so stupid she could not say "Bo" to a goose. Lavretsky blushed, muttered something unintelligible, and ran away. For five whole days he was struggling with his timidity; on the sixth day the young Spartan got into a new uniform and placed himself at Mihalevitch's disposal. The latter being his own valet, confined ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... to come to an understanding with Wittenberg, without which their position would have been extremely perilous. Bucer claimed to represent a middle doctrine, such as was later asserted by Calvin. As no middle ground is possible, the doctrine is unintelligible, being, in fact, nothing but the statement, in strong terms, of two mutually exclusive propositions. After much humiliation the divines succeeded, however, in satisfying Luther, with whom they signed the Wittenberg Concord on May 29, 1536. The Swiss ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... correspondents. Figure to yourself a bald-headed personage, about forty years of age, near seven feet high, deaf as a post, stammering and making convulsive efforts to express a sentence of five words, which, after all, his gibberish made unintelligible. His dress was as eccentric as his person was singular, and his manners corresponded with both. He called himself Baron von Bulow, and I saw him afterwards, in the autumn of 1797, at Paris, with the same accoutrements and the same jargon, assuming an air of diplomatic mystery, even while ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... these propositions would require long details altogether foreign to our present purpose, as we are not writing on ethnology. We will take them for granted, as otherwise we may say that the whole history of man would be unintelligible. If, however, writers are found who apply to their notion of race all the inflexibility of physical laws, and who represent history as a rigid system of facts chained together by a kind of fatality; if a ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... drawing figures in the spilt beer with his pipestem, and discoursing of the glorious times before the great war, 'when there was more food than there were mouths, and more work than there hands.' 'Poor human nature,' thought Lancelot, as he tried to follow one of those unintelligible discussions about the relative prices of the loaf and the bushel of flour, which ended, as usual, in more swearing and more quarreling, and more beer to make it up: 'poor human nature! always looking back, as the German sage says, to some fancied golden age, never ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... think of this crowning calamity, and could only utter broken, unintelligible sounds to express my gratitude for ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... Fletcher stood like a sentinel against the doorpost. He might have been part of it for his immobility. The girl within continued to talk to the horse while she provided for his comfort, low words unintelligible to the silent watcher, till, as she finished her task, she suddenly threw her arms about the animal's neck and leaned her head ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... get at the real state of her feelings; but he was too much agitated for reflection. On gaining his lodging, he felt faint, and put himself immediately to bed. All night long he tossed about in sleepless excitement; and, in the morning, fell into a feverish doze, broken by unintelligible dreams. When he awoke, he rose up, and felt so giddy as to be unable to stand, and again went to bed. During the day, he felt shivering and unwell; and, the next day, the same symptoms continued, and with increased violence. Another day arrived—another, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... tightly by his clasped hands—those very hands, small and marble-white, forming a ghastful contrast to the raven hair that fell thickly on his back. He had not spoken since he rose. Indeed, since his first appearance, he had said nothing but the unintelligible word which he had uttered four times in my presence, and which Dr. Mayhew now believed to be the name of the lady whose portrait he wore. That he could speak was certain, and his silence was therefore the effect of obstinacy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... great offence, and was highly disapproved of by all but Mrs. Hunter. And Aurelia could not like her, for her gossip had been far broader and coarser than that of the Mistresses Treforth, who, though more bitter were more of gentlewomen. Happily much of what passed was perfectly unintelligible to Betty's carefully shielded pupil, who sat all the time with the cat on her lap, listening to its purring music, but feeling much more inclined to believe nothing against my Lady, after her father's example, than to agree with ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and somewhat minatory utterance (that it may haunt your finer sense during your midnight hours of introspective self-communion), I have done my best, my very best, to couch it in the obscurest and most unintelligible phraseology I could invent. If I have failed to do this, if I have unintentionally made any part of my meaning clear, if I have once deviated by mistake into what might almost appear like sense—mere common-sense—it is the fault of my half-French and wholly imperfect ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... fire-side. Here the cordial, combined with previous exhaustion and agitation, and the genial warmth of the fire, soon threw him into a profound sleep. He slept as powerless as a child that is rocked by its nurse, lulled by the unintelligible songs which the old woman continued to murmur to her spinning-wheel—and which still echoed through his dreams, though they had lost their power ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... it is so easy to transpose one alphabet into another that the mere language would afford no security. Therefore, I expect that, when the experts translate this document, the translation or transliteration will be a mere farrago of unintelligible nonsense. But we shall see, and meanwhile the facts that we have offer several interesting suggestions which ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... during his will; and the men are liable to be called upon for any service; yet, by breaking in upon these usages, many difficulties have occurred on board ship, and even come into courts of justice, which are perfectly unintelligible to any one not acquainted with the universal nature and force of these customs. Many a provocation has been offered, and a system of petty oppression pursued towards men, the force and meaning of which would appear as nothing to strangers, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... words I have quoted unintelligible, like the parrot's prating? Perhaps the language may be reconstructed; perhaps it may be found to embody something worth a hearing. Success is most likely to come by considering the growth of alchemy; by trying to find the ideas which were ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... hissed something unintelligible between his teeth. Dempsey and the board exchanged looks. And then Dempsey looked at O'Sullivan without anger, as one looks at a stray dog, and nodded his head in ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... and I should be dumb not to have inquired the road I was to journey; and if dumb there would be an end to my calling." After simpering in a small way, like one whose modesty prohibited a more open expression of his admiration of a witticism that was perfectly unintelligible to his hearers, he continued, "It is not prudent for any one of my profession to be too familiar with those he has to instruct; for which reason I follow not the line of the army; besides which, I conclude that ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... unintelligible excuse and follows her sister—leaving the unfortunate Tommy a prey to his grandmother's tender mercies. So brilliant an opportunity is not, of course, to be thrown away. Tommy's fingers, having incontinently ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... beseeching glance at her lover, and murmured some unintelligible words, but they did not save her. Montgomery crossed himself over the stool, and, after running his fingers over the ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... break, this forest of the church under whose shade he was sitting became absolutely unintelligible. The shapes, faintly sketched, were transformed in the gloom which blurred every outline as it slowly faded. Below, in the vanishing mist, rose the immemorial trunks of fabulous white trees, planted as it seemed in wells that held ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... but the land-hunger of the dispossessed capitalists might to some extent be appeased by a measure that was not only tolerable, but welcome; and modifications, so gradual and subtle that their meaning would be unintelligible to the masses, might subsequently be introduced to remedy observed defects, to calm the apprehensions of the allies, and perhaps to secure the continuance of large holdings, if economic causes ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... opposite the telegraphic machine, from which the "tape" was issuing with a monotonous click. On this "tape"—a narrow strip of paper seemingly endless, which fell on the floor in serpentine coils—were inscribed at regular intervals some cabalistic characters unintelligible to the general public, but full of ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... in this form, and took it section by section. 'Pepys,' that was unintelligible. 'Buttered toast,' no sense in that. 'Suede gloves,' yes, she had told Frank that when she came to town, she would buy some suede gloves at a certain shop in the City, where she could get for three and threepence a pair which ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... situations have their drawbacks, was greatly annoyed by the unearthly noises made by the sentries during the night. Not a person could pass, but he was hailed, and every half hour I was awakened by the guard yelling out some unintelligible words, which were caught up in every direction, in the most discordant tones, until echo herself grew hoarse and disgusted with the repetition. I was well guarded to be sure, but could have dispensed with the attention, and would have bargained for less ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... by, breathing heavily, but to Murray's horror it seemed as if, faintly spoken as it was, the big sailor's warning had reached the sensitive nerves of both the wounded, making them stir uneasily and mutter something unintelligible, while the light of morning, which had before been so sluggish in its approach, seemed now to be coming on by a steady glide, as if the black darkness which had pressed so heavily upon the spirits of two of the party was now being swept away like ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... own times we can see how, through the help of all the cheapest and most perishable household wares, the poorest Japanese is able to enjoy that special peculiarity and synthesis of line and colour and perspective which strikes even initiated Westerns as so exotic, far-fetched and almost wilfully unintelligible. ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... unintelligible and doubtless the MS. is corrupt. No editor has offered a wholly satisfactory emendation, though by comparing Book Sixty, chapter 4, the sense would seem to require: "no one, in taking the oath, mentions the name of Tiberius in the number ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... darlint's head is filled noight and day with ancient history. She's after asking me now if Queen's ever run away!" To Polly's remorseful confusion here her good father equally proud of her precocious interest and his own knowledge, at once interfered with an unintelligible account of the abdication of various Queens in history until Polly's head ached again. Well meant as it was, it only settled in the child's mind that she must keep the awful secret to herself and that no one ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte
... instant there was a start, and a low growling voice asked what was apparently a question as to what was the matter. The response came from the man who had struck the blow; but what he said was unintelligible to the listeners, who had immediately shrunk flat upon the deck, conscious as they were that two of the crew had been sleeping within touch, while for aught they knew ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... distinct species of Euploea and Diadema, having broad bands or patches of white, which do not exist in any of the allied species from the larger islands. These facts seem to indicate some local influence in modifying colour, as unintelligible and almost as remarkable as that which has resulted in the modifications of form ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... sallied forth into the streets to inquire the cause of the disturbance, they soon discovered that they had, in some mysterious manner, been entrapped. Wild Irishmen, with uncouth garb, threatening gesture, and unintelligible jargon, stood gibbering at every corner, instead of the comfortable Flemish faces of the familiar burgher-guard. The chief burgomaster, sleeping heavily after Sir William's hospitable banquet, aroused himself at last, and sent a militia-captain to inquire the cause of the unseasonable drum-beat ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... dread. A thousand impalpable fears and doubts beset his mind. He had grown timid as a woman. The old happy audacity had been destroyed by sleepless nights and a torturing anxiety. It was a new thing for Keith Macleod to have become a prey to strange unintelligible forebodings. ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... the agricultural colleges and the experiment stations offered good advice to the Southern farmer, but they reached only a small proportion. Their bulletins had a small circulation and were so full of technical expressions as to be almost unintelligible to the average farmer. Recently the writers have attempted to make themselves more easily understood, and the usefulness of their publications has consequently increased. The bulletins of the Department of Agriculture are read in increasing numbers, ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... indifferent—detest, indeed, as interfering with their love. When he ends Tristan knows he has no explanation to offer—none that Mark could possibly understand: human affection and elemental human passion are unintelligible to one another. He replies that he cannot answer Mark's "Why?" and turning to Isolda asks whether she will follow him whither he is now going—the land of eternal night. He, not Mark, plans his death. Isolda answers straightway that she will follow. Tristan and Melot fight, but Tristan allows ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... vainly endeavoring to give utterance to various exclamations, but she could only gasp out some unintelligible sound, while her eyes flashed fire and her ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... sacredness of life is extended over all those of the same race, tested generally by their speaking somewhat the same language. That was the condition in classic antiquity: it was "Jew and Gentile," "Greek and barbarian"—the very word "barbarous" coming from the unintelligible sounds, to the Greeks, of those who spoke other than the Hellenic tongue. Even Plato, with all his far-sighted humanism, says, in the Republic, that in the ideal state, "Greeks should deal with barbarians as Greeks now deal with one another." ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... artificial. Thought is not a mechanical calculus, where the elements and the method exhaust the fact. Thought is a form of life, and should be conceived on the analogy of nutrition, generation, and art. Reason, as Hume said with profound truth, is an unintelligible instinct. It could not be otherwise if reason is to remain something transitive and existential; for transition is unintelligible, and yet is the deepest characteristic of existence. Philosophers, however, having perceived that the function of thought is to fix static terms and ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... preparing the contents of Volume II, I became convinced that I had made a mistake and that the work to be exhaustive should comprise every message of the Presidents transmitting reports of heads of Departments and other communications, no matter how brief or unintelligible the papers were in themselves, and that to make them intelligible I should insert editorial footnotes explaining them. Having acted upon the other idea in making up Volume I and a portion of Volume II, quite a number of such brief papers were intentionally omitted. Being convinced that all the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... inasmuch as it affected the personal arrangements, if they may be so termed, of the sovereign, was settled in the same session, and on a new principle. What was called the Civil List had hitherto been placed on a footing which was at once unintelligible and misleading. The expression was first used at the Revolution, and was applied not only to that portion of the revenue which was devoted to the personal expenses of the sovereign, but also to many branches ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... the maggot of which he had just been speaking; it had fastened upon him and was sucking his life-blood. In his past there had been the strange marriage in the style of Dostoevsky; long letters and copies written in a bad, unintelligible hand-writing, but with great feeling, endless misunderstandings, explanations, disappointments, then debts, a second mortgage, the allowance to his wife, the monthly borrowing of money—and all this for no benefit to any one, either himself or others. And in the present, ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... have beside me the original opinion written by Mr. Lynx; and shall treat the reader to a taste of it—giving him sufficient to enable him to appreciate the very ticklish position of affairs with Mr. Titmouse. To make it not altogether unintelligible, let us suppose the state of the pedigree to be something like this, (as far ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... before her. Nedda and Derek, Derek and Nedda! The news was almost unintelligible; those two were still for her barely more than little creatures to be tucked up at night. Engaged! Marriage! Between those who were both as near to her, almost, as her own children had been! The effort was for the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... traffic which would take place if no such metals existed, and the trade between countries were purely a trade of barter." Of this principle, so fertile in consequences, previous to which the theory of foreign trade was an unintelligible chaos, Mr. Ricardo, though he did not pursue it into its ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... be a more certain proof that the power by which the whole operation is performed, so far from being directly and fully known by an inward sentiment or consciousness, is to the last degree mysterious and unintelligible? Here the mind wills a certain event: Immediately another event, unknown to ourselves, and totally different from the one intended, is produced: This event produces another equally unknown: Till at last, through ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... passed the period of boyhood, and are asked about their religious feelings up to that time, are reported to tell the same story. They say that the meaning of the church service whither they had accompanied their parents, and of the kneeling to pray, had been absolutely unintelligible, and a standing puzzle to them. The ritual touched no chord in their untaught natures that responded in unison. Very much of what we fondly look upon as a natural religious sentiment is ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... interrupted the jockey by observing that his discourse was, for the greater part, unintelligible to me. ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... chatted as we walked together through the streets, but I know that my answers were unintelligible. I felt I was not myself. All my senses were keen as far as I could gauge—all save that of my memory of ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... Atherlys of centuries; recumbent in armor or priestly robes, upright in busts that were periwigged or hidden in long curls, above the marble record of their deeds and virtues. Some of these records were in Latin,—an unknown tongue to Peter,—some in a quaint English almost as unintelligible; but none as foreign to him as the dead themselves. Their banners waved above his head; their voices filled the silent church, but fell upon his vacant eye and duller ear. ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... here, the first was probably written early in the thirteenth century, while the rest all date from the early twentieth century. It might therefore be supposed that the earliest of these stories was written in a language more or less unintelligible to modern Icelanders, and that there was a gap of many centuries in the literary production of the nation. This, however, is not ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... rose unsteadily, and Henrietta, with frozen tears on her cheeks, and an unintelligible expression of wretchedness and rage, appeared. After an instant of amazement, he sprang to her and clasped her in his arms, and she, against her will, and protesting voicelessly, ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... volubility is rather a contradiction to the yea and nay appellation of the country. A respectable Frenchman informed us, that the peasants of Languedoc were considered to possess much wit and ingenuity by those who could understand their patois, which he frankly owned was unintelligible to himself. Their liveliness and animal exuberance are as strong a contrast to the immoveable form into which they are swathed when infants, as the flutter of a butterfly is to its torpidity as a ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... half through breakfast, Selphar came down, blushing, and frightened half out of her wits, her apologies tumbling over each other with such skill as to render each one unintelligible,—and evidently undecided in, her own mind whether she was to be hung or burnt ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... concerning things which can only be known by their manifestations. But they soon found themselves in a strange land, confused with sights and sounds unknown, in the explanation of which they, of course, choose terms as unintelligible to their readers, as the ideal realities were to them. This course, adopted by Aristotle, has been too closely followed by those who have come after him.[2] But a new era has dawned upon the philosophy of the mind, ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... discovered. Then he looked at the clock again, and was almost angry at the imperturbable monotony of its face. Then he took out his pocket-book to amuse himself by reading his memorandums, but they were very few, and very unintelligible. Then he rose up from his seat, and went to the window; and looked at the people in the street; he thought they looked very stupid, and wondered what they could all find to do with themselves. He looked at the carriages, and saw none with coronets, except now ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... younger sister, had gone to Quebec also, but after a week of rebellion, bad temper and sharp speaking, had come home again without ceremony, and refused to return. Despite certain likenesses to her mother, she had a deep, if unintelligible, admiration for her father, and she never tired looking at the picture of her great-grandfather in the dress of a chevalier of St. Louis—almost the only thing that had been saved from the old Manor House, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... remarked Larry; while Nat tried to express himself intelligently along similar lines; but being suddenly seized with one of his spasms, was obliged to take it out in numerous mouthings, and a working of his facial muscles, all the while making unintelligible sounds. ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... This claim, though unintelligible to the savages in its legal aspects, was practically understood by them to be fatal to their independence and territorial rights. Although in a certain degree the border tribes had been defeated in their conflicts with the United States, they still retained ...
— Cessions of Land by Indian Tribes to the United States: Illustrated by Those in the State of Indiana • C. C. Royce
... first edition in 3 vols. Saunders & Otley, 1836. On page 360 a few words, enclosed in square brackets, have been inserted from the magazine version, as the abbreviated sentence, always hitherto reproduced from the first edition, is unintelligible. ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... went forward to him with the green bough, and accompanied by Yuranigh. We found him in a profuse perspiration about the chest, (from terror, which was not, however, obvious in his manner,) and that he had nothing at all to say to us after all; indeed his language was wholly unintelligible to my native, who, moreover, apprised me that he was the big bully from the tribe at our former encampment, then distant some twenty-five miles. He handled my hat, asked for my watch, my compass, and was about to examine my pockets, when Yuranigh desired ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... going on; they called to those in the village, and on being answered we again went on for about half a mile, when every bundle was put down and a halt called, and again we had to listen to the unintelligible story of the wild animal or animals that would destroy us. We sat down and tried to get them to see as we did, that a house was necessary for our comfort. A thunderstorm was working up, and soon the rain would be down on us—let ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... Family believed that it was only abdicating its political power, whilst retaining all ancient ceremonial rights and titles. Plainly the conception of a Republic, or a People's Government, as it was termed in the native ideographs, was unintelligible ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... he had not accustomed himself to a fictitious hesitation, a stuttering—which disfigured his speech, and which, redoubled when important things were in question, became insupportable and sometimes unintelligible. He had wit, learning, knowledge of the world; much desire to please and insinuate himself, but all was spoiled by an odour of falsehood which escaped in spite of him through every pore of his body—even in the midst of his gaiety, which ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... frightened. The method of operation of the higher intelligences was Tom Finnegan's theme, and he desired to find out if Jurgis had ever considered that the representation of things in their present similarity might be altogether unintelligible upon a more elevated plane. There were assuredly wonderful mysteries about the developing of these things; and then, becoming confidential, Mr. Finnegan proceeded to tell of some discoveries of his own. "If ye have iver had onything to do wid shperrits," said he, and looked inquiringly at ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... Gilberte, or, rather, you think you know her, but do we ever understand women? All their opinions, their ideas, their creeds, are a surprise to us. They are all full of twists and turns, cf the unforeseen, of unintelligible arguments, of defective logic and of obstinate ideas, which seem final, but which they alter because a little bird came and perched on the ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... she could have wept, so vital, so entrancing, had been the vision. Piteously she tried to plead with him, but it was as though an obscuring veil had been dropped upon her. She could only utter unintelligible murmurings. She sought for words ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... a good deal of what was said was unintelligible. The Marshall children were quite accustomed to incessant conversations between their elders of which they could gather but the vaguest glimmering. They played about, busy in their own absorbing occupations, ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... and Venters had one glimpse of his great breadth and bulk, his gold-buckled belt with hanging guns, his high-top boots with gold spurs. In that moment Venters had a strange, unintelligible curiosity to see Oldring alive. The rustler's broad brow, his large black eyes, his sweeping beard, as dark as the wing of a raven, his enormous width of shoulder and depth of chest, his whole splendid presence so wonderfully charged with vitality ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... constant access to all parts of the ground. There we saw the cock rising up and singing, then taking his turn upon the eggs; and by-and-by, we observed him cease to sing, and saw them both constantly engaged in bringing food to the young ones. No unintelligible hint to fathers and mothers of the human race, who have, before marriage, taken delight in music. But the time came for mowing the grass! I waited a good many days for the brood to get away; but, at last, I determined on the ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... other birds and quadrupeds, at unlawful seasons, and contrary to the laws of this realm, which have secured, in their wisdom, the slaughter of such animals for the great of the earth, whom I have remarked to take an uncommon (though to me, an unintelligible) pleasure therein. Now, in humble deference to his honour, and in justifiable defence of my friend deceased, I reply to this charge, that howsoever the form of such animals might appear to be similar to those so protected by the law, yet it was a mere DECEPTIO ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... the relation between prestige and prejudice? When what is unintelligible, or mysterious, is at one time received with enthusiasm, at another with indignation, what renders necessary these two extreme sentiments of appreciation which, though appearing under apparently identical circumstances, are diametrically ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... when we return, and are asked our opinion of what we have seen or heard, we are only able to answer, as I hinted above the scenery is fine, the company splendid and genteel, the music charming for the time, the action not extraordinary, the language unintelligible, and, for all these ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... they seem to be its only readers now except the reluctant parsons at the church lecterns, who communicate their discomfort to the congregation by gargling the words in their throats in an unnatural manner that is as repulsive as it is unintelligible. And this is because the imposition of the legends as literal truths at once changes them from parables into falsehoods. The feeling against the Bible has become so strong at last that educated ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... were two golden chairs which they understood they were expected to sit upon, and occupied accordingly. A mitred and coped ecclesiastic, who appeared to be some kind of Bishop, then shepherded them benevolently through a series of mystic rites that, besides being hopelessly unintelligible, seemed unreasonably protracted. However, they reached the climax at last, and amidst the tumultuous acclamations of the spectators the previously anointed heads of King Sidney and Queen Selina, as they must henceforth be described, ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... earnest entreaties of her poor old nurse—but reason's light, from that fearful moment, was darkened evermore. She would suffer herself to be led out into the open air, and soon grew fond again of being with her old playmates, the children; but her words were unintelligible now to them, and she would often throw down the wreath she was twining, and starting up, would exclaim, in a tone that thrilled to one's very heart, "Oh, has he come? Are you sure he has not come yet—my rose ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... they do not fight with their neighbours, they fight among themselves. They are divided into sections, which abuse, plunder, and sometimes murder each other, and on the most frivolous points of difference that would be unintelligible to us if we had not read history, and seen that we too have passed through the same early state of ignorance and barbarism. Any trifle is sufficient to set them together by the ears. They pretend to be all equals, and the more ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... drawing-room. Had he been permitted, he would have held forth to Monica by the hour on the history of the business firm which he had served for a quarter of a century. This subject alone could animate him. His anecdotes were as often as not quite unintelligible, save to people of City experience. For all that Monica did not dislike the man; he was a good, simple, unselfish fellow, and to her he ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... with fresh beauty in their sight. They tasted as it were for themselves and us, of all that there ever was pure in human bliss. "In them the burthen of the mystery, the heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world, is lightened." They stood awhile perfect, but they afterwards fell, and were driven out of Paradise, tasting the first fruits of bitterness as they had done of bliss. But their pangs were such as a pure spirit might feel at the sight—their tears "such ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... unintelligible. He threw the freshly lit cigarette absently into the fireplace instead of the spent match, swore under his breath, and grabbed ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... the dinner, when rumors of Genevieve Ryan's engagement to Lord Hastings were in lively circulation, Faraday called at the lion-guarded mansion on California Street, and, in answering to his regulation request for the ladies, received the usual unintelligible Chinese rejoinder, and was shown into the gold drawing-room. There, standing in front of a long mirror, looking at her skirts with an eye of pondering criticism, was Miss Genevieve, dressed to go out. She caught sight ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... such as the two fliers had never seen before, like humans except that their skins were a light green instead of the normal white and pink. They were dressed in dark short tunics, and kept talking to each other in a tongue quite unintelligible to Norman and Hackett. They came closer, flocking curiously around the two men, with a babel of voices quite meaningless to the two. Then one of the men uttered an ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... minutes after, a gentleman handed Melinda to the piano, and there was a brief pause as she struck the instrument, and commenced going through the unintelligible intricacies of a fashionable piece of music. She could strike all the notes with scientific correctness and mechanical precision. But there was no more expression in her performance than there is in that of a musical box. After she had finished her task, she left the ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... his sleep when Gwyn reached his side, but for a time his words were unintelligible. Then quite plainly ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... Faleile-langi—House roofed by the heavens, that is to say, no house at all, and alluding to the remote tradition of a time when people had no houses. This lady was the daughter of the god Tangaloa, and had a child who was dumb, and from that child she named the island Tau. U expresses the hollow unintelligible sound emitted ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... are at once unintelligible, irrelevant, and untrue. But they are immaterial; and serve only to lug in, (not to introduce,) the assumption that the "power, whereby the present ever gathers into itself the results of the past, transforms the human race into a colossal man whose life reaches from ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... All generosity is not merely French and sentimental; nor is it to be concealed, that living blood and a passion of kindness does at last distinguish God's gentleman from Fashion's. The epitaph of Sir Jenkin Grout is not wholly unintelligible to the present age. "Here lies Sir Jenkin Grout, who loved his friend, and persuaded his enemy: what his mouth ate, his hand paid for: what his servants robbed, he restored: if a woman gave him pleasure, he supported her in pain: he never forgot his children: and whoso ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Assamese (official), Kashmiri (official), Sindhi (official), Sanskrit (official), Hindustani a popular variant of Hindu/Urdu, is spoken widely throughout northern India note: 24 languages each spoken by a million or more persons; numerous other languages and dialects, for the most part mutually unintelligible ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... this apparently unintelligible custom have any reference to the 21st verse of the IXth chap. of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans: "Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?"—the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... public benefit in this respect, rose to the consulship (556) and to the censorship (560). His treatise —the "-Tripartita-" as it was called—was a work on the Twelve Tables, which appended to each sentence of the text an explanation—chiefly, doubtless, of the antiquated and unintelligible expressions—and the corresponding formula of action. While this process of glossing undeniably indicated the influence of Greek grammatical studies, the portion treating of the formulae of action, on the contrary, was based on the older collection of Appius(69) and ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... away the hybrid government which still claimed allegiance in the name of Rome. The provincials of the fifth century possessed the writings in which those lessons were recorded, but possessed them only as symbols of an unintelligible past. A long training in new schools of thought, under new forms of government, was necessary before the European mind could again be brought into touch ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... had only a wild rhythm, and flowed forth in the fitful measure of a wind-harp, did not clothe itself in the sharp brilliancy of the Italian tongue. The words, so far as they could be distinguished, were German, and therefore unintelligible to the Count, and hardly less so to the sculptor; being softened and molten, as it were, into the melancholy richness of the voice that sung them. It was as the murmur of a soul bewildered amid the sinful gloom of earth, and retaining only enough memory of a better state to make sad ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the man was almost winded, and his breath was coming in quick gasps, a faint, far-off cry floated down to him through the ghostly aisles of the naked wind-swept forest. At first it was so faint as to be almost unintelligible, but as they pressed on, it grew louder and clearer, until the man recognized the pitiful ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... we speak in England, and in the language of the Greeks, there are identical verbal roots, or elements entering into the composition of words. That fact remains unintelligible so long as we suppose English and Greek to be independently created tongues; but when it is shown that both languages are descended from one original, the Sanscrit, we give an explanation of that resemblance. In the same way the existence of identical structural roots, if I may so term them, ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley |
