"Unspeakable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whole nature seemed suddenly softened. He seemed to see her before him now, with her angel face and her floating white robes; he seemed even yet to be looking into those soft, bright eyes, and to read there again, as he had read before, love unspeakable, truth unchangeable. His heart was filled with a yearning tenderness, an intense and longing fondness, and he extended his arms, as if to embrace that white-robed image of truth and gentleness: but ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... making a lot of water and to report having spoken her. This was also signalled by the commercial code in case they should not have heard. Good-bye was said by dipping the ensign, and as the rescuer vanished into the dark, an unspeakable sadness crept over the ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... faded to insignificance. Shuddering waves of horror swept over him. He raised his hand unsteadily, drew it across his brow, and it came away dripping wet. He was oppressed by the feeling familiar in evil dreams—of gazing with leaden limbs at deliberate, unspeakable acts. ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... was feeling more strongly than ever that Timothy's was hopelessly 'rum-ti-too' and the souls of his aunts dismally mid-Victorian. The subject on which alone he wanted to talk—his own undivorced position—was unspeakable. And yet it occupied his mind to the exclusion of all else. It was only since the Spring that this had been so and a new feeling grown up which was egging him on towards what he knew might well be folly in a Forsyte of forty-five. More and more of late he had been conscious that he was 'getting ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... exhausted: the stale exhalation of a multitude of lungs which vice was rotting; tasting of their very putridity. A mist of tobacco smoke filled the place—was still rising in bitter, stifling clouds. There was a nauseating smell of beer and sweat and disinfectants. The boy's foot felt the unspeakable slime of the ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... versing, even the reading of the tale That brings my heart its joy unspeakable, Sometimes will softly, unsuspectedly hale That heart from thee, and all its pulses quell. Discovery's pride, joy's bliss, take aback my sail, And sweep me from thy presence and my grace, Because my eyes dropped from ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... was prolonged: the fare was only tolerable; but the over-flowings of affection made it delicious. Never had I better understood the unspeakable charm of family love. What calm enjoyment in that happiness which is always shared with others; in that community of interests which unites such various feelings; in that association of existences which forms one single being of ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... Him on the cross, and thought that He was lost to them for ever; they saw Him die, and gave up all hope of His rising again. And we know that Christ is not lost to us for ever. We know Christ is not on the cross, but at the right hand of God in bliss and glory unspeakable. We may be told to watch with the three Maries at the tomb of Christ: but we cannot do as they did, for they thought that all was over, and brought sweet spices to embalm His body, which they thought was in the tomb; and we know that all ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... Son must be forever perfectly like the perfect Father. For then you will believe that God the Father looks on you, and feels for you, exactly as does Jesus Christ your Lord; then you will feel that he is a Father indeed; and will enter more and more into the unspeakable comfort of that word of all words, 'Our Father ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... shall be exerted to make every thing easy and agreeable to you: And as I shall soon have the honour of attending my beloved to Bedfordshire, it will be a very considerable addition to my delight, and to my unspeakable obligations to the best of men, to see my dear Mrs. Jervis, and to be received by her with that pleasure, which I promise myself from her affection. For I am, my dear good ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... a click, and, to my unspeakable horror, saw that he was deliberately covering me from behind the camera with a revolver—that was what I had seen bulging inside ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... lips along her shoulders and neck. She was penetrated with a quivering; her eyes now closed, now opened, with an expression of unspeakable delight. Petronius after a while raised her exquisite head, and said, turning to Vinicius,—"But think now, what are thy gloomy Christians in comparison with this? And if thou understand not the difference, go thy way to them. But this ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... by a wife, and of the wife saying in a mincing voice, "This is George in his den," and of boarding-house females peering over the wife's shoulder and smiling fatuously at the denizen who, in an old shooting jacket and slippers, grinned vacuously back at them. To Mark this was a horrible and unspeakable vision. ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... he can, and living in squalor, filth, and extreme discomfort, yet daubs himself with grease and paint, and decorates his head with feathers, his neck with bear's claws, and his feat with gaudily-stained porcupine's quills? What of your black barbarian, whose daily life is a succession of unspeakable abominations, and who embellishes it by blackening his teeth, tattooing his skin, and wearing a huge ring in the gristle of his nose? Either of them will give up his daily food, and run the risk of starvation, for a glass bead or a brass button. This desire for ornament is plainly, then, no ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... what he considers to be the chief advantage of them. Cephalus answers that when you are old the belief in the world below grows upon you, and then to have done justice and never to have been compelled to do injustice through poverty, and never to have deceived anyone, are felt to be unspeakable blessings. Socrates, who is evidently preparing for an argument, next asks, What is the meaning of the word justice? To tell the truth and pay your debts? No more than this? Or must we admit exceptions? Ought I, for example, ...
— The Republic • Plato
... think of marriage, of course on the most modest basis; could he quite see himself offering to the girl he chose the hand and heart of a grocer? He laughed. It was well to laugh; merriment is the great digestive, and an unspeakable boon to the man capable of it in all but every situation; but what if she also laughed, and not in the sympathetic way? Worse still, what if she could not laugh, but looked wretchedly embarrassed, confused, shamed? That would be a crisis it ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... suppose I was too angry. I must have been. Jevons's offence was unspeakable, or seemed so. He had outraged all decencies. He had done me about the worst injury that one man can do to another—at any rate, I wasn't sure that he hadn't. How could I have been sure! Every appearance was against ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... to hear her stories, particularly as she kept the amusing or the merely pathetic ones for them, refraining from telling them of the unspeakable, obscene tragedies which daily came to her notice. It might have been supposed that scenes such as these would so have revolted her that she could not endure to deal with them; but this was far from being the case. The greater the need for her help, the ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... away from the kirk that Sabbath—though many a voice was unable to join in the psalm. The little grave was soon filled up, and you hardly knew that the turf had been disturbed beneath which she lay. The afternoon service consisted but of a prayer—for he who ministered, had loved her with love unspeakable—and, though an old grey-haired man, all the time he prayed he wept. In the sobbing kirk her parents were sitting, but no one looked at them—and when the congregation rose to go, there they remained sitting—and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... the wrong action? It is the love of God, and not the fear of evil, that is the incentive in Science. [5] I rejoice with those who rejoice, and am too apt to weep with those who weep, but over and above it all are eter- nal sunshine and joy unspeakable. ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... spite or desire to make himself conspicuous, took hold of some hasty or imprudent word, turned it round, mangled it, and brought it redhot to the magistrates, who seldom had the courage to kick the informer downstairs. Such unspeakable depths of human baseness came to light, so full of corruption and pestilence, that the eye turned in horror from the incredible spectacle. The newspapers brought daily reports of denunciations for "lese majeste," and when Schrotter ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... again upon the rising sun. After looking steadily at it for some time, he cried out, "Oh! if the appearance of this earthly and created thing is so beautiful and so quickening, how much more shall I be enraptured at the sight of the unspeakable glory of the Creator Himself!" That was the feeling of a man whose sense of earthly beauty had all the keenness of a poet's enthusiasm; but who, withal, had in his greatest health and vigour preserved ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... could be bestowed upon me, better than life itself—my mother;—at length she became unwell, and the thought that I might possibly lose her now rushed into my mind for the first time; it was terrible, and caused me unspeakable misery, I may say horror. My mother became worse, and I was not allowed to enter her apartment, lest by my frantic exclamations of grief I might aggravate her disorder. I rested neither day nor night, but roamed about the house like one distracted. Suddenly I ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... under a feigned name, to seek from usurping hands a shelter 'neath his own roof; a beggar of that from others which it should have been his to grant or to deny those others. As an avenger he came. For justice he came, and armed with retribution; the flame of a hate unspeakable burning in his heart, and demanding the lives—no less—of those that had destroyed him and his. Yet was he forced to sit a mendicant almost at that board whose head was his by every right; forced to sit and curb his mood, giving no outward sign of the volcano that boiled and ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... by which the man of the people or the barbarian is often detected. A feeling for measure is a produce of civilisation, and men of the people ignore it. Those street daubers who draw on the flags of the London foot-paths always represent heartrending scenes, or scenes of a sweetness unspeakable: here are fires, storms, and disasters; now a soldier, in the middle of a battle, forgets his own danger, and washes the wound of his horse; then cascades under an azure sky, amidst a spring landscape, with ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... she sang, but she found time for domestic cares. His buttons were carefully sewn on and his fire was always bright. One evening his table was adorned with a bright blue vase—as blue as Lydia's earrings—filled with dried grasses and paper flowers. He gazed blankly at it in unspeakable horror, and then paced up and down the room, wondering how he should endure life with it continually before his eyes. Some books lay on a side-table, and as he passed he looked absently at them and halted. On his Shelley, slightly askew, as if ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... it of the kind of death she must suffer? I hoped not; for she feared only one kind, and that one had for her unspeakable terrors. I believed she so feared that one that with her strong will she would shut the thought of it wholly out of her mind, and hope and believe that God would take pity on her and grant her an easier one; and so it ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... almost unspeakable horror followed his words; after the fall of the rock had revealed to them how frightful was the peril which they had escaped, all three of them for a moment felt paralysed in every limb, and after looking close into each other's faces, blanched white ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... The unspeakable contempt of the insult shattered Bud Ellis's self-control. Prompted by blind fury, the great fist of the man shot out, hammer-like, and Clayton crumpled at his feet. It was a blow that would have felled ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... conscientious secretaries wondered what the world was coming to when they saw labour leaders like M.r John Burns and Mr. Ben Tillett, and land-reformers like Mr. Henry George, being ushered into the presence of his Eminence. Even the notorious Mr. Stead appeared, and his scandalous paper with its unspeakable revelations lay upon the Cardinal's table. This proved too much for one of the faithful tonsured dependents of the place, and he ventured to expostulate with his master. But he never did ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... Chips and Bungs increased their devotion to the bottle; and, to the unspeakable envy of the rest, these jolly companions—or "the Partners," as the men called them—rolled about deck, day after day, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... "nigger;" but it was infinitely less wrong than to do it unto one of their own color. These men did not consider such acts as right in themselves, but only as right in view of their comparative importance and necessity, and the unspeakable inferiority ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... borrow?" Grace Stepney rose up before her in sable wrath. "Do you imagine for a moment that I would raise money on my expectations from cousin Julia, when I know so well her unspeakable horror of every transaction of the sort? Why, Lily, if you must know the truth, it was the idea of your being in debt that brought on her illness—you remember she had a slight attack before you sailed. Oh, I don't know the particulars, of course—I don't WANT to know them—but there were rumours ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... Upton, and Montagu talk of their loved friend. Eric's life seemed absorbed in the thought of him, and in passionate, unspeakable longings for his recovery. Now he valued more than ever the happy hours which he had spent with him; their games, and communings, and walks, and Russell's gentle influence, and brave kindly rebukes. Yet he must not even ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... beginning of the world has ever known what love is, or looked into his eyes, for Eros alone of divinities is altogether a spirit, and hides in passions not of his essence if he would commune with a mortal heart. So that if a man love nobly he knows love through infinite pity, unspeakable trust, unending sympathy; and if ignobly through vehement jealousy, sudden hatred, and unappeasable desire; but unveiled love he never knows. While I thought these things, a voice cried to me from the crimson figures: 'Into the dance! there is none that can be spared out ...
— Rosa Alchemica • W. B. Yeats
... have another political party, possibly another political system. We will clear up this rotten society, or we will try how we like a different organization of society. The people of America are beginning to murmur. The burden of the murmur is that they have long enough been betrayed. Unspeakable injustice has been done the people of America under the forms of law and government. It is coming to be said that our law and government have not an even hand for all, that a few are allowed to despoil ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... piteous burden is outlined against the real sky. The green hill beyond is Calvary. Doves flutter in and out, and butterflies dart across the shafts of sunlight. The expression of Christ's face is one of anguish, forgiveness, and pity unspeakable. Then his head drops forward on his breast. It grows dark. The weeping becomes lamentation, and as they approach to thrust the spear into His side, from which I have been told the blood and water really may be seen to pour forth, I turn faint and sick and close my eyes. It has gone ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... of performance greatly assisted by Duke of TECK enthusiastically beating time with his dexter band. Such auxiliary conducting must be of unspeakable ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... the God of their fathers, to trust in Him who never fails those that seek Him, and to love that God entirely who hath manifested so much love to them, and that in their greatest extremities; and hereby to endeavour that a grateful acknowledgment of the goodness and unspeakable love of God might be transmitted to his children's children; that as God never forgets to be gracious, so his servants may never forget to be thankful, but to express the thankfulness of their hearts by the actions of ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... ceremony of weighing, for which he had given order. I explained the reason, as it actually was, on which he chid Asaph Khan publicly for the omission. He was at this time so richly ornamented with jewels, that I must confess I never saw at any one time such unspeakable wealth. He now amused himself in seeing his greatest elephants brought in before him. Some of these were lord-elephants, having their chains, bells, and furniture all of gold and silver, being attended by many gilt ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... church before; and in that magical light I saw for the first time the inlaid steps, the fluted columns, the sculptured bas-reliefs and canopy of the marvellous shrine. The marble, worn and mellowed by the subtle hand of time, took on an unspeakable rosy hue, suggestive in some remote way of the honey-colored columns of the Parthenon, but more mystic, more complex, a color not born of the sun's inveterate kiss, but made up of cryptal twilight, and the flame of candles upon martyrs' tombs, and gleams ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... draws his misty hordes together in the glimmering twilights of eternity, and as they are penned within the awful Fold, the rays long separate are bound into one, and life, and joy, and beauty disappear, to emerge again after rest unspeakable on the morning of a ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... the key it is sung in gives it some resemblance. Each phrase ends with a long trill, the final note of which is held with incredible strength of breath, and rises a quarter of a tone, sharping systematically. It is barbaric, but possesses an unspeakable charm, and anybody, once accustomed to hear it, cannot conceive of another song taking its place at the same hour and in the same place, ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... could have been no more than fifteen, was convulsed by rage. He was showing his teeth like a vicious dog. The most appalling flow of profanity came shrieking through his white lips. David was shocked. Never in all his life had he heard such unspeakable names as those which the tormented boy was screaming back ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... is responsible for unspeakable ills. The case is so plain that human reason would seem sufficient to furnish a cure. It ought not to be difficult to agree upon the principles that ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... room, but he was a little ashamed before his inner self, as well as before his uncle, to run away immediately after pocketing the money. Presently, the farm-bailiff came up to give his master a report, and Fred, to his unspeakable relief, was dismissed with the injunction to ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Ruth just happened to alight—as they say—just happened to alight on that field of Boaz? Yet all ages, all generations, have an interest in the fact that she was to become an ancestor of the Lord Jesus Christ, and all nations and kingdoms must look at that one little incident with a thrill of unspeakable and eternal satisfaction. So it is in your history and in mine: events that you thought of no importance at all have been of very great moment. That casual conversation, that accidental meeting—you did not ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... dangerous kind, but of course I begged her to be quiet and not disturb any one and collected myself, as I followed her quickly upstairs, sufficiently to consider what were the best remedies to be applied if it should prove to be a fit. She threw open a door and I went into a chamber, where, to my unspeakable surprise, instead of finding Mr. Skimpole stretched upon the bed or prostrate on the floor, I found him standing before the fire smiling at Richard, while Richard, with a face of great embarrassment, looked at a person on the sofa, in a white great-coat, with smooth ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... make nothing out of the papers you have sent me; nor am I able to discriminate between what you admit to be newspaper slander and the attack on the castle with the unspeakable name. At all events, your account is far too graphic for the Treasury lords, who have less of the pictorial about them than Mr. Mudie's subscribers. If the Irish peasants are so impatient to assume their rights that they will not wait for the "Hatt-Houmaioun," or Bill in Parliament ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... already adopted the generally accepted maxim, never to show eagerness lest the opponent draw an advantage from it. Hence the remarkable calm and cold-bloodedness in farmers, which diplomats should admire. But in its full extent and application it is a vicious policy, which causes unspeakable evil, estranges countless people, makes them appear enemies to one another, generates coldness where generous zeal should be kindled, and results in an indifference which causes an involuntary goose-flesh to scamper up the back of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... sense as that. Many and many a fine thought is lost to the world, and all the value of many a deep emotion, because he who thinks or feels cannot voice himself, any more than you or I can necessarily take a brush and paint, like Turner, the unspeakable glories of a sunset which our eyes and soul can nevertheless appreciate to the very full. "What makes a poet?" says Goethe, and he replies, "A heart brimful of some noble passion." No doubt the noble passion must be there before a man can be a poet, but equally beyond doubt the ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... employer, the manager of this hotel, seen that snow?" pursued the personage, with a gesture of unspeakable solemn menace. ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... fashionable people of Alencon dined at four. Under the Empire they still dined as in former times at half-past two; but then they supped! One of the pleasures which Mademoiselle Cormon valued most was (without meaning any malice, although the fact certainly rests on egotism) the unspeakable satisfaction she derived from seeing herself dressed as mistress of the house to receive her guests. When she was thus under arms a ray of hope would glide into the darkness of her heart; a voice told her that nature had not so abundantly provided ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... the Triumphal Odes and the Congratulatory Poems which should have greeted Mr. PUNCHINELLO, who, after deserting his beloved Italy, after a stormy voyage and unspeakable sea-sickness, has arrived here with a view of settling and of becoming a citizen (having already filed his first papers) of this magnificent Republic? Where are the poets who should have greeted the venerable ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... hackneyed subject, because I have often thought that young women—more, if possible, than most other young persons—need to be reminded of the unspeakable importance of moments. It is only a minute or two, many will say, or seem to say; and so they let time pass unemployed. But these leisure moments are frequently recurring; and the more they are slighted and wasted, the more they will be. And what is worse, she who frequently ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... noise, proceeded to tie him up in it with his garters and its own corners. No sound escaped poor Tom beyond a continuous mumbled entreaty through its folds. Richard laid him on the floor, pulled all the bedding upon the top of him, and gliding out, closed the door, but, to Tom's unspeakable relief, as his ears, agonizedly listening, assured him, did not lock it ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... as to the peasant—God is "the unknown," and in which he must forever remain the incomprehensible. This has been confessed by all thoughtful minds in every age. It was confessed by Plato. To his mind God is "the ineffable," the unspeakable. Zophar, the friend of Job, asks, "Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection?" This knowledge is "high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?" Does not Wesley ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the barber of Bagdad, the greatest chatterbox that ever lived. Being sent for to shave the head and beard of a young man who was to visit the cadi's daughter at noon, he kept him from daybreak to midday, prating, to the unspeakable annoyance of the customer. Being subsequently taken before the caliph, he ran on telling story after story about his six brothers. He was called the "Silent Man," because on one occasion, being accidentally taken up with ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... say that July 10th, the day of my home coming, I knelt down and kissed with unspeakable gratitude and love its dear earth and once more thanked God that His hand had led me—led ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... the tone of horrified contempt that might well have been hers had she found a rattlesnake and a brace of toads in her son's pocket. And she lowered her voice, as is the manner of her kind when forced to speak of the unspeakable. She moved back from the puppy's politely out-thrust forepaw as from the passing of a ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... forget it. Yet she was not without a good many very small and unessential resources for sleepless moments. Often she wrote vague comments on matters with which she was not familiar, in an exercise-book, always eventually mislaid. She would awake from dear and unspeakable dreams full of hope, and tell herself stories about herself, trying on various lives and deaths like clothes. The result was never likely enough even ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... his lips, nodded his head, and looked unspeakable things. The Chaplain moved on through the dust, and privates, sergeants, and subalterns called one another's attention to the boy. The Colonel, at the head of the column, stared at him curiously. 'It was probably some bazar rumour.' he said; 'but even then—' He referred ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... while he was away, finding out terrible, unspeakable things, my father forgot about me—or else he didn't realize I was big enough to mind. He never wrote. When he came back, after eleven months, he was an old man, with gray hair. I'll never forget the night he came, ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the breakers, calling our attention to a dark breach in the line of foam that stretched out before us, which he fancied to be a channel between the rocks. A few desperate strokes brought us to the spot, when, to our unspeakable joy, we found it to answer the man's conjecture; but, so narrow was the passage, that the oars on both sides of the boat struck the rocks; a minute afterwards we found ourselves becalmed and in safety. The boat being moored, and the men ordered to watch by turns, we lay down to sleep, as ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... wonder whither, what has doubt done, what has investigation done, touching this great hope of ours, as we face that which we speak of as the Unknown? So far as the old-time and traditional belief is concerned, I hold that doubt has been of infinite and unspeakable service. Certainly, I could rather have no belief at all than the old belief. Certainly, I would rather sink into unconsciousness and eternal sleep than wake to watch over the battlements of heaven the ascent of the smoke of the torment that goeth up forever and ever. But is there any rational ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... this war in the front ranks, whoever realizes all the misery and unspeakable wretchedness caused by a modern war ... will unavoidably arrive at the conviction, if he had not acquired it earlier, that mankind must find a way of overcoming war. It is untrue that eternal peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful one. A time will and must arrive which will no longer know ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... another and a higher sphere of usefulness and happiness, that it no longer looks to me like passing through a dark valley, but rather like merging into sunlight and joy. When consciousness returned to me, I was floating in an ocean of divine love. Oh, dear Sarah, the unspeakable peace that I enjoyed! Of course I was to come down from the mount, but not into the valley of despondency. My mind has been calm, my faith steadfast, my continual prayer that I may fulfil the design of my Father in thus restoring me to life and finish the work he must ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... existences, drifting and endless as the cloud-seas of color. Clutching it, as if the tightness of his hold would strengthen his sense of possession, he went aimlessly down the street. It was his watch at the mill. He need not go, need never go again, thank God!—shaking off the thought with unspeakable loathing. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... auspicious moment arrived; in the still noontide of night the preconcerted rap at the street door announced the happy result of the momentous expedition. The virtuoso sprang from his couch with extasy to admit the illustrious prodigy of nature. His astonishment, delight, and triumph were unspeakable:—two horns of the most beautiful curva- ture adorned the crested head of this noble northern. Anticipation thus blessed by the fulness of fruition, the bringer was super-abundantly rewarded. Next morning the virtuoso sent a message to each of his most highly favoured friends, desiring attendance ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... up the arrest of Vallandigham with especial earnestness, and were guilty of the unspeakable folly of nominating him as their candidate for governor. They appointed an imposing committee—one from each Congressional district of the State—to communicate with the President in regard to the sentence of banishment. They arrived in Washington about the last of June, and addressed ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... him to guide her through the unknown house. Breathlessly she ran up-stairs and found her room. The sight of her maid moving about, of the lights on the dressing-table, of the roses, and her dress laid out upon the bed, brought her sudden and unspeakable relief. The color came back to her cheeks, she began to chatter to her maid about everything and nothing—laughing at any trifle, and yet feeling every now and then inclined to cry. Her maid dressed her in pale pink and told her plainly when the last hook was fastened and the last string ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Markham Everard, after one look of unspeakable anguish towards Alice, turning his back to depart, he broke out into his familiar ejaculation, "Oddsfish! this must not be." In three strides he overtook the slowly retiring Everard, tapped him smartly ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... which buttoned high at the top and thereby hid the deficiencies of my collar. I stuck the cap on my head, and added his gloves to my get-up. The dusty roadman in a minute was transformed into one of the neatest motorists in Scotland. On Mr Jopley's head I clapped Turnbull's unspeakable hat, and told him ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... meetings with Redgrave—at the Crystal Palace and elsewhere; and, but for her innocence, she would have felt herself at the woman's mercy. That she had not transgressed, and was in no danger of transgressing, enabled her to move with head erect among the things unspeakable which always seemed to her to be lurking in the shadowed corners of Mrs. Strangeways' house. The day was coming when she might hope to terminate so undesirable an acquaintance, but for the present she must show a ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... it possesses this other unspeakable advantage, that while it manifests an infinite abhorrence of sin, it displays the most heart-subduing love of the sinner. If Zaleucus had exhausted the penalty of the law upon his son, this would have had little ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.' Well, I confessed my sins and forsook them, and God for Christ's sake pardoned all my sins. Praise His name. The joy and peace that filled my soul were unspeakable. I was a new man. I loved everybody, even my bitter enemies. Christ, in all his blessed reality, came into my heart as an abiding companion. Some time after my conversion, through a holiness paper, which fell into my hands, and through reading the Bible, which had become a new book to me, ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison
... breath; and, almost simultaneously with a sharp, rushing noise in the leaves overhead, something drops upon his shoulder. He grasps it, cautiously feels of it, and, to his unspeakable amazement, discovers that it is a rope apparently fastened to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... confident of her power to take care of herself, to breast any storm. And here, at the beginning of her flight, she found herself in utter confusion of body and spirit, powerless to protect herself against such conduct as Harold's, such printed gossip as lay before her, or such unspeakable insinuations ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... bodily pain, at different periods of my life, but anything like that misery, thank God, I never endured before or since. I earnestly hope it may not resemble any type of death to which we are liable. I was, indeed, a spirit in prison; and unspeakable was ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... air. Artists she remembered were a race of beings quite apart from the rest of humanity and with the exception of a few money-seeking foreigners, one of whom had painted her portrait, and Teddy Vincent, a New Yorker socially prominent (who was unspeakable), her acquaintance with the cult had been limited and unfavorable. When, therefore, her car drew alongside the curb of the old-fashioned building to which Olga directed the chauffeur, Hermia was already ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... public. For three months, you fastened yourself upon me; and I could not shake you off. What availed it me, that you were an honest and excellent man? Did I not, twenty times a day, wish you had been a villain, who had insulted me, and I a Kentucky giant, that I might have the unspeakable satisfaction of knocking you down? But you added to your crimes virtue. Villany had no part or lot in you. You were a member of a church, in good and regular standing; you had graduated with all the honors worth mentioning; you had not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... same time to let the World see we are so. I do not know a more dreadful Menace in the Holy Writings, than that which is pronounced against those who have this perverted Modesty, to be ashamed before Men in a Particular of such unspeakable Importance. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... ending for a ghastly tragedy. No law or literature could have brought happiness to him. He sought it in the various ways, in every way but the one, simple and only right way—the effort to confer happiness on others. Frantic intoxications, the culminations of carnal pleasures, which amount to unspeakable ecstasies, are mere temporations which are followed by lassitude, exhaustion and disgust, and these soon turn to a fiercely implacable hate. The search for happiness, when carried to the extreme, becomes a torture. The desire for happiness ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... sensible that nothing but the great power and unspeakable mercies of the Lord could relieve my soul from the heavy burden it laboured under at that time.—A few days after my master gave me Baxter's Call to the unconverted. This was no relief to me neither; on the contrary it occasioned as much distress ...
— A Narrative Of The Most Remarkable Particulars In The Life Of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, An African Prince, As Related By Himself • James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw
... and aroused Mabel from her comfortless sleep in the chamber above. She arose with a thrill of unaccountable awe, and glided down the stairs, passing the mulatto chambermaid, who stood motionless as a bronze statue outside the door. As the woman saw her she gave a cry and her eyes dilated with unspeakable horror; slowly, as if she had been forced into motion by some irresistible power, she turned and followed after Mabel, step by step, till both stood in the room of death. The eyes of those two women fell on the dead body of General Harrington at the same moment; Mabel burst into tears. The mulatto ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... achievements of modern science in this direction, I wished devoutly, at that particular moment, that flying had never been invented; and it was something of a coincidence, I say, that stumbling in this frame of mind down one of the unspeakable little side-streets in the neighbourhood of the University, my glance should have fallen upon an eighteenth-century engraving in a bookseller's window which depicted a man raised above the ground without any visible ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... rejoiced in the Federal success and sorrowed in its adversity. Now that victory had perched on the national standard—a standard we believe henceforth and forever consecrated to impartial liberty—they were filled with joy unspeakable. And he would allow them to say that it had afforded them the greatest pleasure to observe the alacrity with which the colored men of the nation offered and embraced the opportunity to manifest their devotion and bravery in support of ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... himself. Of the four company commanders, two have been commandeered while home on leave from India, and the other two have practised the art of war in company with brother Boer. Of the rest, there are three subalterns from the Second Battalion—left behind, to their unspeakable woe—and four from the O.T.C. The juniors are very junior, but ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... to be eaten raw. Reindeer meat was stewed in copper kettles. Hard tack was soaked in water and mixed with reindeer suet. Tea from the ever present Russian tea kettle and seal oil from a sewed up seal skin took the place of drink and relish. The tea was good, the seal oil unspeakable, a liquid not even to be smelled of by a white man, ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... dear," she said, leaning on her stick, the queerest rag-bag of a figure—crooked wig, rusty black dress, and an unspeakable bonnet—"you are a saint, of course, and I am a quarrelsome old sinner; I like society, and you, I believe, regard it as a grove of barren fig-trees. I don't care a rap for my neighbor if he doesn't amuse me, and you live in a ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... uncompromising heartiness. The criticisms varied only in tone. One cursed with relish and gusto; another with a certain pity; a third with a kind of wounded superiority, as of one compelled against his will to speak of something unspeakable; but the meaning of all was the same. James Boyd's play was a ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... so shattered that he could scarcely have spoken, even if he had been reckless enough to do so. He felt himself doomed; and when brutal natures like his succumb, they usually break utterly. Therefore, he could do no more than shiver with unspeakable dread as if he had ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... House "Hermiston's hanging face" - they struck mere dismay into the wife. She sat before him speechless and fluttering; at each dish, as at a fresh ordeal, her eye hovered toward my lord's countenance and fell again; if he but ate in silence, unspeakable relief was her portion; if there were complaint, the world was darkened. She would seek out the cook, who was always her SISTER IN THE LORD. "O, my dear, this is the most dreidful thing that my lord can never be ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... struck my bare knees that I realized I was on the street in my shirt. Often, when I was given a brief to work up for Mr. Thompson, I would slave over it until the small hours of the morning and then, to his disgust—and my unspeakable mortification—find that my work was valueless, that I had not seized the fundamental points of the case, or that I had built all my arguments on some misapprehension ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... one always feels when a man does his duty well and bravely. There is quite enough sorrow and shame and suffering and baseness in real life, and there is no need for meeting it unnecessarily in fiction. As Police Commissioner it was my duty to deal with all kinds of squalid misery and hideous and unspeakable infamy, and I should have been worse than a coward if I had shrunk from doing what was necessary; but there would have been no use whatever in my reading novels detailing all this misery and squalor and crime, or at least ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... without whom Man is as nothing—invisible, incorporeal, one God, of perfect perfection and purity, under whose wings we find repose and a sure defence." How can we reconcile St. Augustine with his own devilish creed, or the religious belief of the Aztecs with their unspeakable cruelties? Perhaps we can only reconcile them by remembering out of what deeps of barbarism and what nightmares of haunting Fear, man has slowly emerged—and is even now only slowly emerging; by remembering ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... of persons; his notable prosopopoeias, when he maketh you, as it were, see God coming in His majesty; his telling of the beasts' joyfulness, and hills leaping; but a heavenly poesy, wherein, almost, he sheweth himself a passionate lover of that unspeakable and everlasting beauty, to be seen by the eyes of the mind, only cleared by faith? But truly, now, having named him, I fear I seem to profane that holy name, applying it to poetry, which is, among us, thrown down to so ridiculous ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... serving against love,—the love Of the Unspeakable; for if we soil The souls He openeth out a washing-place; And if we grudge, and snatch away the bread, Then will He save by poverty, and gain By early giving up of blameless life; And if we shed out gold, He even will save In spite of ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... plans. While I was in Madison I hired a white man to go over to Bedford, in Kentucky, where my mother was then living, and bring her over into a free State to see me. I hailed her approach with unspeakable joy. She informed me too, on inquiring whether my family had ever been heard from, that the report which I had just heard in relation to Malinda was substantially true, for it was the same message that she had sent to her mother and friends. ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... O solitude unspeakable! to be For ever with oneself! never to see An equal face, or feel an equal hand, To sit in state and issue reprimand, Admonishment or glory, and to smile Disdaining what has happened the while! O to be breast to breast against ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... thou laughest to see me, a soldier, go questioning of these women's toys?' 'Sir,' answered Ambrogiuolo, 'I laugh not at that; nay, but at the way I came by them.' 'Marry, then,' said Sicurano, 'an it be not unspeakable, tell me how thou gottest them, so God give thee good luck.' Quoth Ambrogiuolo, 'Sir, a gentlewoman of Genoa, hight Madam Ginevra, wife of Bernabo Lomellini, gave me these things, with certain others, one night ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the monster slurching across the floor toward her, step by scraping step and in spite of her fist on her mouth a tiny nervous scream escaped Robina. Jason wanted to stop then but she badgered him into continuing. Now he was the hero, Gregg Mason, battling the unspeakable fiend and she shivered uncontrollably as she watched them struggle to the death. In a last, desperate, superhuman effort, Gregg's hands clawed into the monster's body and ripped out the foul, quivering heart of ...
— The Premiere • Richard Sabia
... pure and unspeakable, On whom no changing shadow ever fell! Thy light we know not, are content to see; And shall we doubt because we know not Thee? Or, when thy wisdom cannot be expressed, Fear lest dark vapours dwell within thy breast? Nay, nay, ye shadows on our souls descending! ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... indicate his preference one way or the other, but describes the fourth state of the self as unseen (ad@r@s@ta), unrelationable (avyavaharyam), ungraspable (agrahyam), indefinable (alak@sa@na), unthinkable (acintyam), unspeakable (avyapades'ya), the essence as oneness with the self (ekatmapratyayasara), as the extinction of the appearance (prapancopas'ama), the quiescent (s'antam), the good (s'ivam), the one (advaita) [Footnote ref 1]. The world-appearance (prapanca) would ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... of a pitiless massacre. The maddened slaves did not even spare the children at the breast; they dragged them from their mothers' arms and dashed them upon the ground. The women were the victims of unspeakable insult and outrage.[274] Every slave had his own wrongs to avenge, for the original assailants had now been joined by a large number of the domestics of the town. Each of these wreaked his own peculiar vengeance and then turned to take his ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... her hand as she stood before him. 'No, Mr Trent; let me finish before you say anything. It is such an unspeakable relief to me to have broken the ice at last, and I want to end the story while I am still feeling the triumph of beginning it.' She sank down into the sofa from which she had first risen. 'I am telling you a thing ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... Unspeakable wrath flooded Fabio's breast in a suddenly-invading torrent.—"Accursed sorcerer!" he yelled fiercely, and seizing Muzio by the throat with one hand, he fumbled with the other for the dagger in his belt, and buried its blade to ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... if the whole iceberg were saturated with transfused moonbeams, that gave forth a mellow radiance, which flashed at times like brilliants, and burst into flame and played like lightning along the almost invisible rims and ridges. The unspeakable, the incomprehensible light throbbed through and through; and was sometimes bluish green and sometimes greenish blue; but oftenest with the one was the other, both at once, and with a perfectly bewildering ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... have them shipped from there. It seemed impossible; it seemed a thing out of a play or a novel, but she could not doubt the fact. After all, Rita was a person for a play or a novel. This thing, which to Margaret seemed unspeakable, was to Rita but a natural impulse of ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... chateau saw with joy the change that now appeared in Veronique's behavior. Without being told to do so, Aline got out her mistress's riding-habit and put it in good order for use. The next day Madame Sauviat felt unspeakable relief when her daughter left her room ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... nature's music triumph, sure to please: Such truth, such warmth, such tenderness express'd, That my old heart was dancing in my breast. Upsprung the youth, "O Jennet, where's your hand? "There's not another girl in all the land, "If she could bring me empires, bring me sight, "Could give me such unspeakable delight: "You little baggage! not to tell before "That you could sing; mind—you ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... unhappy boy! Heaven preserve me from the heroics, especially the economical heroics! The one heroic course possible, I decline. What, then, have I to complain of? Must I tear my hair because a man of taste has resisted my unspeakable charms? To be charming, you must be charmed yourself, or at least you must be able to be charmed; and that apparently I'm not. I didn't love him, or he would have known it. Love gets love, and no-love ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... she, and the sound of the old name, falling from her lips, thrilled me with a joy unspeakable, and seemed already to reinvest me in my old estate, "Messer Biancomonte, you have done me in these four-and-twenty hours such service as never did knight of old for any lady—and you did it, too, out of ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... could be said of it: for first, its being declined only with three cases, did expressly point out the trinity of persons, then that the nominative ended in S, the accusative in M, and the ablative in U, did imply some unspeakable mystery, viz., that in words of those initial letters Christ was the summus, or beginning, the medius, or middle, and the ultimus, or end of all things. There was yet a more abstruse riddle to be explained, ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... Patsy's neighbourhood were not the ones to let her remain in this deplorable state of ignorance. She was to be enlightened as to other changes that might take place in her condition, and of the unspeakable horrors that would ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... white-haired, vilified, aged by his degradation; but chiefly the crowd howled and reviled, and the men spat in the Jew's face and covered him with a load of horse-dung and foul ordure. They hung him finally after unspeakable tortures. Then his body was left to rot in Stuttgart's market-place in the sight of all. A hideous carrion dangling in a silver cage, which his judges had caused to be constructed as a terrible warning to those who would profit by the ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... of Newgate, which have hidden so much misery and such unspeakable anguish, not only from the eyes, but, too often, and too long, from the thoughts, of men, never held so dread a spectacle as that. The few who lingered as they passed, and wondered what the man was doing who was to be hanged to-morrow, would have slept but ill that night, ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... unspeakable to feel the little fingers in mine, for this was the first time that my flesh touched hers, and with the touch a thrill of gladness, the like of which I had never felt before, passed through ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... the crystal of your mind Shows only faint disturbing images, Things passing strange, as if enchanted seas Kept their great swell upon it, and strange fish Played in its oily depths. Some monstrous wish, The shadow of some unspeakable desire, Strikes my heart cold, and ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... and banners of crimson hues, loud sounded the paean of praise and thanksgiving from thousands of straining throats, while below on the side lines the coaches leaped for joy and strained each other to their breasts in unspeakable delight. ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... foolish business of Sheil and Hill has been the sole topic of discussion, to the unspeakable disgust of every sensible person in and out of the House. All feel the embarrassment, the ridicule, the disgrace of such an occupation, and the members of Parliament are provoked that the affair was not strangled at the outset. The Speaker is now ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... ones—Hubshis—whose touch and shadow are pollution. They were enormous eaters; sleeping on their bellies; laughing without cause; wholly like animals. Some were called Fingoes, and some, I think, Red Kaffirs, but they were all Kaffirs —filth unspeakable. I taught them to water and feed, and sweep and rub down. Yes, I oversaw the work of sweepers—a jemadar of mehtars (headman of a refuse-gang) was I, and Kurban Sahib little better, for five months. Evil months! The war went as Kurban Sahib had said. Our new men were slain and ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... remain, but his lips seemed paralyzed. A few moments later a strange group entered the cottage—five figures dressed in Federal uniforms, hands and faces white and ghastly, and two carrying white cavalry sabres. Each one had its finger on its lips, but Perkins was beyond speech. In unspeakable horror he stared vacantly before him and remained silent and motionless. The ghostly shapes looked at him fixedly for a brief time, then at one another, and solemnly nodded. Next, four took him up and bore him out, the fifth following with the jug. At the door stood an immovably tall form, ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... for the avoidance of future trouble, I went on to read aloud the whole of the Storm chapters, to the children's unspeakable delight. Hugh John even begged for the book to take to bed with him, which privilege he was allowed, on the solemn promise that he would not "peep on ahead." Since Sweetheart's prophecies as to Die Vernon, such conduct ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Mark Twain was equally so. Where the former tells one of the unspeakable compulsions of Louis ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... cannibal tribes with which they have come in contact. Probably the best—that is to say, the least objectionable—exemplifications of Islam now to be found in the world are seen in some of the older states of Western Soudan. The Mandingo of the central uplands furnished a better material than the "unspeakable Turk," and it would not be quite fair to ascribe all his present ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... Smollett, and with every reference to the water looks of understanding traveled from student to student: that the class was of both sexes made the situation no better. Cope was in good enough physical condition,—the unspeakable draught from the unspeakable flask had ensured that,—but he felt what was in the air of the classroom and was correspondingly ill ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... favorable hour, to his Prussian Majesty. December 5th, 1732, as we compute;—a kind of epoch in his Majesty's life. Prussian Majesty stares wide-eyed; the breath as if struck out of him; repeats, "Julich and Berg absolutely secured, say you? But—hm, na!"—and has not yet taken in the unspeakable dimensions of the occurrence. "What? Imperial Majesty will make me break my word before all the world? Imperial Majesty has been whirling me about, face now to the east, face straightway round to ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the most part a tale of the abattoirs, those unspeakable survivals in our Christendom in which man reeks his savage and sensual will on the lesser animals; and indirectly it is a story of the moral abattoirs of politics, economics, society, religion and the home, where the victims are of the species human, and ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... bathed in a peace as of heaven, as the vesper hymn floats over the evening air! It is a scene that will never again be enacted in the history of the world—dreamers dreaming greatly, building a castle of dreams, a fortress of holiness in the very center of wilderness barbarity and cruelty unspeakable. The multitudinous voices of traffic shriek where the crusaders' hymn rose that May night. A great city has risen on the foundations which these dreamers laid. Let us not scoff too loudly at their mystic visions and religious rhapsodies! Another generation ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... strait of green between the butments that uplift the giant domes. Far to the westward, widening more and more, it opens into the bosom of great mountain-ranges,—into a field of perfect light, misty by its own excess,—into an unspeakable suffusion of glory created from the phoenix-pile of the dying sun. Here it lies almost as treeless as some rich old clover-mead; yonder, its luxuriant smooth grasses give way to a dense wood of cedars, oaks, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... of Christian doctrine is treated, which, understood aright, illumines and amplifies the honor of Christ [which is of especial service for the clear, correct understanding of the entire Holy Scriptures, and alone shows the way to the unspeakable treasure and right knowledge of Christ, and alone opens the door to the entire Bible], and brings necessary and most abundant consolation to devout consciences, we ask His Imperial Majesty to hear us with forbearance in regard to matters of such importance. For ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... his friend and listened. This John Ward was a John Ward that few people in Millsburgh knew. But Captain Charlie knew him. Captain Charlie had seen him tested in all the ways that war tests men. In cold and hunger and the unspeakable discomforts of mud and filth and vermin—in the waiting darkness when an impatient whisper or a careless move to ease overstrained nerves meant a deluge of fire and death—in the wild frenzy of actual conflict—in the madness of ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... unspeakable outrage," declared Mr. Gale, hotly. "Such a thing would not be tolerated in the East. Mr. Belding, I'm amazed at your attitude in the face ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... Then stood one before them horrible in stature and in aspect; and he looked on the saint, and, bitterly weeping, said unto him: "How great thanks do I give unto thee, O beloved and chosen of God! who even for one hour hast released me from unspeakable torments and from the gates of hell!" And he besought the saint that he might go along with him; but the saint refused, for that no man for very terror could stand before his countenance. And being asked ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... particles, and even the very masts are pointed with a blue flame. I expect great interest in scouring over the plains of Monte Video, yet I look back with regret to the Tropics, that magic lure to all naturalists. The delight of sitting on a decaying trunk amidst the quiet gloom of the forest is unspeakable and never to be forgotten. How often have I then wished for you. When I see a banana I well recollect admiring them with you in Cambridge—little did I then think how soon ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... rock of yore agone Built up; Agylla's city 'tis, where glorious folk of war, The Lydian folk, on Tuscan hills pitched their abode of yore. 480 A many years of blooming once they had, until the king Mezentius held them 'neath his pride and cruel warfaring. Why tell those deaths unspeakable, and many a tyrant's deed? May the Gods store them for the heads of him and all his seed! Yea, yea, dead corpses would he join to bodies living yet, And hand to hand, O misery! and mouth to mouth would set; ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... possession of it. He even complained to the landlord, and asked if the room belonged to a single customer or to the whole company. This invasion of his realm was indeed the last straw. Men were brutes, and he conceived an unspeakable scorn for humanity when he saw Logre and Monsieur Lebigre fixing their eyes on Florent with rapt attention. Gavard with his revolver irritated him, and Robine, who sat silent behind his glass of beer, seemed to him to be the only sensible person in the company, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... when I have read of some religious rites of the heathens; such as their offering the captives, who were taken in war, sacrifices to their devil-gods, nay, even their own children that have been offered up in the flames; I have found it raise an unspeakable indignation against both them and their religion. And what idea must a person have of that God who has made on purpose millions of rationals to fulfil his decree here, censuring and frowning for ever over them, while they are tormented with endless ...
— A Solemn Caution Against the Ten Horns of Calvinism • Thomas Taylor
... thousand unspeakable charms in her conversation; but what I am most pleas'd with, is the attentive politeness of her manner, which you seldom see in a person in love; the extreme desire of pleasing one man generally taking off greatly from the attention ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter,' 2 Corinthians, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... half prance, half shuffle, and trying very hard not to look scared. He was no stranger to the port, it seems, and in his distress was able to make tracks straight for Mariani's billiard-room and grog-shop near the bazaar. That unspeakable vagabond, Mariani, who had known the man and had ministered to his vices in one or two other places, kissed the ground, in a manner of speaking, before him, and shut him up with a supply of bottles in ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... first, treats that life as a hated enemy, to be opposed and fought, as he gives himself freely out to heal the world's hurt, he will find all the sweets and fragrance of life coming to him. Their unspeakable refreshment will ever ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... grief, they left behind them soft, faint hues as of returning day; instead of fierce, smarting heat, they brought the clear light of other years to the eyes that had seen such horror of death, such misery of want, and that now gazed tranquilly on such sights of unspeakable joy. ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... sat like a carved image, save when he had thrust out a hand to restrain Falcone, and his attitude had filled me with an unspeakable dread. But at this moment he leaned forward turning an ear towards Cosimo, as if anxious not to miss a single word that the man might utter. And Cosimo, intent as he was, did not observe ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... been dangerously wounded. The citadel being thus left exposed to the approaches of the enemy, could not long withstand the violence of their operations; the two covered ways were taken by assault. On the twentieth of May the governor capitulated, to the unspeakable mortification of king William, who saw himself obliged to lie inactive at the head of a powerful army, and be an eye-witness of the loss of the most important fortress in the Netherlands. Louis having taken possession of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... world which had been so full of sweet and innocent happiness for her, the world which would now be ranged with her or against her according to her decision at noon, she was overcome by a panic at the very idea of throwing her single self against this many-headed tyrant. With an unspeakable terror she longed to feel the safe walls of conformity about her. There was a battle with drawn swords in the heart of the little girl trying blindly to see where the n ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... pulled with a will, while to see haughty Hector in his shirt sleeves, with his hair matted on his forehead, was indeed a novel experience. Arthur was stroke, and Mellicent sat in front and coached him in his duty, to the amusement of the company and his own unspeakable delight, and Eunice dabbled her hand in the water, and sent little showers of spray tossing up into the air. Every now and then, when Arthur made a reply to Eunice more professedly deferential than ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... Lend me your ears. Have you ever lived in a one-horse country town—a place with one unspeakable hotel and about twenty stores and ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... looking at every familiar place of his youth. He knew now that every foot of it would be his. He had no bitterness in his heart. Not he, for in the love and constancy of Alice Westmore all such things seemed unspeakable insignificance to the glory ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... they were exceptions. The colonists possessed in eminent degree energy, determination, power of patient endurance and sacrifice. Their political genius, too, was striking in itself, and it becomes surprising if one compares Germany, in the unspeakable distraction of the Thirty Years' War, with America at the same period, 1618-1648, successfully solving by patience and debate the very problems ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... and quiet spirit was she, active to laboriousness, though refined in person. Affectionate she was, very dear to me also, but unspeakable is the loss to others. This is the third wife taken from those whom I desired as comrades: one died in Dublin, one in Bagdad, now ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... to the motion of his jaws, her unspeakable depression tightening up her tonsils and the very pit of her scared ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... doctor not supported her shoulder, she would have fallen, but her words poured on in a fierce torrent. "You have broken my heart, and you have killed him. You knew how much I cared. You are a monster, but not an idiot. You have sacrificed a country to your one unspeakable Moloch of a god—I hope ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... and each of us had our little separate circle; we did not form a mutual admiration society and advertise ourselves as a kind of exclusive, Athos, Porthos, Aramis and d'Artagnan swashbucklery; but, in a quiet way, we recognised our quadruple union of hearts, and talked amazing rubbish and committed unspeakable acts of lunacy and dreamed impossible dreams in a very delightful, and perhaps unsuspected, intimacy. We were now in our middle and late thirties—all save poor Tom Castleton, over whom, in an alien grave, the years of the Lord passed unheeded. Poor old chap! ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... was the length and the width of the table between them. She had to be content with all that Savage found chance to accord her—a bow, a smile, and a glance down his nose significant of unspeakable intelligence. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... action implies expenditure of force, the modicum of force given to any physical organization must finally be spent; benignity, because a bodily immortality on earth would both prevent all the happiness of perpetually rising millions and be an unspeakable ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... sound lacked the old genuineness. To-night he was evidently trying hard to believe that he enjoyed the music-hall entertainment; in former days he would have dismissed anything of the kind with a few contemptuous words. When the people about him roared at imbecilities unspeakable, he threw back his head and roared with them; when they stamped, he raised as much dust as any one. Totty had no need to affect amusement; her tendency to laughter was such that very little sufficed to keep her in the carelessly merry frame of mind ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... not, however, retire from Germany, but continued to participate in the war, which now degenerated into a series of raids by leaders whose soldiers depopulated the land by their unspeakable atrocities. Wallenstein roused the suspicions of the Catholics by entering into mysterious negotiations with Richelieu and with the German Protestants. This treasonable correspondence quickly reached the ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... ugly," he went on, "the assurance of the creature and my unspeakable carelessness in permitting the official letters brought to me on the day before by the post-office messenger to be seen. In my relaxation I had forgotten the eye of the chair attendant. I took the cigar out of my ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... declaring that those limits may be passed at pleasure." (Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch, 177.) More weighty words than these have never, speaking of human things, fallen from the lips of man: weighty in themselves from their own simple but eloquent conclusiveness—weightier still from their unspeakable importance, the immeasurable influence they have had, and, it is to be hoped, will ever continue to have, upon the destinies of the United States of America. The judiciary department, though originating nothing, but acting only when invoked by parties ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... father and so many famous warriors have already gone. "So young and fair, and yet so cold and stern!" Siegmund exclaims; and at last he asks whether Sieglinda will also be there. "Siegmund will see Sieglinda no more," she replies to a quiet phrase of unspeakable pathos. Then Siegmund refuses to go with her, and he draws his sword to slay first Sieglinda, then himself. Brunnhilda is overwhelmed by the revelation of a love so devoted, and at last promises to help him. It is her own nature as is revealed to her. Night and storm ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... hard to determine; but the Occasion of this, is to desire you to inform several Gluttons of my Acquaintance, who look on me with Envy, that they had best moderate their Ambition in time, lest Infamy or Death attend their Success. I forgot to tell you, Sir, with what unspeakable Pleasure I received the Acclamations and Applause of the whole Board, when I had almost eat my Antagonist into Convulsions: It was then that I returned his Mirth upon him with such success as he was hardly able to swallow, though ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele |
