"Indescribable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Paris, too, is preeminently soft and balmy, and the temperature so even that ladies may sit in the most brilliant attire all evening in the open air under the trees of this pleasure-garden without the least danger of contracting a cold. One of the first evenings that I enjoyed these scenes of indescribable beauty, I could not help but observe to my companion, that the finest poetical descriptions of a celestial Paradise, were not ideal representations of imaginary pleasures, but true word images of the joys and beauties of the "Elysian Fields" ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... was about this period that the small-pox made its appearance in the village. Indescribable was the dismay of Phelim's parents, lest he among others might become a victim to it. Vaccination, had not then surmounted the prejudices with which every discovery beneficial to mankind is at first met; and the people were left principally to the imposture of quacks, or the cunning ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... of the most glaring kind. But the dialogue is resplendent with wit and eloquence, which indeed are so abundant that the fool comes in for an ample share, and yet preserves a certain colloquial air, a certain indescribable ease of which Wycherley had given no example, and which Sheridan in vain attempted to imitate. The author, divided between pride and shame, pride at having written a good play, and shame at having done an ungentlemanlike thing, pretended that he had merely scribbled a few scenes for ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Edna's nerves, and an indescribable sensation of dread, a presentiment of coming ill, overshadowed her heart. This was the son of her friend, and the first glimpse of him filled her with instantaneous repugnance; there was an innate and powerful repulsion which she could not analyze. He was a ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... those joys which his mother had with difficulty refrained from descanting upon. She kissed him in the back of the neck, and again where his golden curls met his brow—a brow the color of a rose crystal. A delicious, indescribable baby odor came up from him, composed of perfumed breath, of clean flannels, and of general adorability. Suddenly, not knowing she was going to do it, Kate snatched him to her breast, and held him strained to her while he nestled there, eager ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... boars lose their heads; there was a sudden clatter of tusks, a muffled, indescribable sound, half squeal, half roar; a fountain of feathery snow, and two shots close together. Then ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... also be regretfully abandoned; and with it the two other possible excuses as well. This secrecy is one which cannot be justified as a sensational joke nor as a common human freemasonry, nor as an indescribable personal whim. Strangely enough, indeed, it violates all three conditions and classes at once. It is not hidden in order to be revealed: it is hidden in order to be hidden. It is not kept secret because it is a common secret of mankind, but because mankind must not get hold of ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... shed tears with him—tears of pity and of rage at all this spectacle implied. On a day of indescribable glory, when earth and heaven shed benedictions upon the soul of man, a child, whose nature would have bidden him rejoice as only childhood may, wept his heart out because his hand had dropped a sixpenny piece! The loss was a very serious one, and he ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... unvarnished tale, these legends may appear childish or absurd, but they have a depth of meaning to those who strive to read between the lines of such rude and inarticulate attempts to describe the indescribable. That which (the previous and subsequent career of the teacher being borne in mind) seems to be possible and even probable, appears to be somewhat ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... time she had read the secret in his eyes, but his lips had remained mute. She understood this tact, this diplomacy which, though it chafed her, she could not rebuke. Thus, he was more or less a fragment of her thoughts, day after day. Ah, that mad folly, that indescribable impulse, which had brought her to New France instead of Spain! Eh well, the blood of the De Rohans and De Montbazons was in her veins, and the cool of philosophy was never plentiful in that blood. She was to learn ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... them. On landing at the other side, we had to ascend a ladder about 200 feet high. We ordered a carriage at the Cataract Hotel, and drove to the whirlpool, four miles down the Rapids. This is an awful place, and indescribable. We then walked over Bath Island and Iris (or Goat) Island: here again is a splendid view. We saw Gull Island, where man has never been; and in the Rapids we saw the hull of the ship Detroit, fitted up in ...
— Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic • George Moore
... his portentous introduction, fills the rest of his sixteen loosely printed double-columned octavo pages with a farrago of the most indescribable character, made up of brags, lies, promises, forged recommendations and letters, boasts of systematic charity, funny scraps of stuff in the form of little disquisitions, advertisements of remedies, hair-oils, cosmetics, liquors, groceries, thistle-killers, anti-bug ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... one, attempted to show others the right road. And in this way I have gone on for thirteen years, preaching and teaching, visiting the sick, and ministering to them, with Winifred by my side heartening me on. Occasionally I am visited with fits of indescribable agony, generally on the night before the Sabbath; for I then ask myself, how dare I, the outcast, attempt to preach the word of God? Young man, my tale is told; ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... not find Greenton, or Bayley's Four-Corners, as it is more usually designated, on any map of New England that I know of. It is not a town; it is not even a village; it is merely an absurd hotel. The almost indescribable place called Greenton is at the intersection of four roads, in the heart of New Hampshire, twenty miles from the nearest settlement of note, and ten miles from any railway station. A good location for a hotel, you will say. Precisely; ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... a cratered, jagged globe of desolation indescribable; of sheer, bitter cold incarnate and palpable; of stark, sharp contrasts. Gigantic craters, in whose yawning depths no spark of warmth had been generated for countless cycles of time, were surrounded by vast ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... was deposited; and there she fainted away, holding her hand still clenched, wounded, bleeding, with the nails deep bedded in the flesh. Brigaut, Frappier, his wife, and the old woman stood looking at Pierrette in silence, all four of them in a state of indescribable amazement. ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... arms with a gesture indescribable, elate, nervous with his passion. "Auntie, think of it: you mind her eyes and her hair, yon turn of the neck, and her song? ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... endeavouring to aim, but think of the hare's ears—say a couple of feet in front of his tail—and the moment the gun feels steady pull the trigger. The flash and report come together; there is a dull indescribable sound ahead, as some of the shot strikes home in fur and some drills into the turf, and then a rustling in the grass. The moorhens dive, and the coots scuttle down the brook towards the mere at the flash. While yet the sulphurous smoke lingers, ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... convictions and intellectual opinions gathered from that contact a supreme degree of that character by which men knew him; that character which is the most distinctive possession of the best American nature; that almost indescribable quality which we call, in general, clearness or truth, and which appears in the physical structure as health, in the moral constitution as honesty, in the mental structure as sagacity, and in the region of active life as practicalness. This one character, with ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... annoyances and indignities and so far they were good, but they also helped towards a more general indifference. She might have told these last experiences to Mr. Brumley if she had not felt them to be indescribable. They could not be half told. They had to be told completely or they were altogether untellable. So she had them hid, and at once accepted and distrusted the consolation they brought her, and went on with the duties and philanthropies that she ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... in indescribable terror. "Geronimo, your intimate friend? That noble and generous cavalier who loves you as a brother? He is as gentle ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... proximity. Those who were at Edenburn at the time state that between four and half-past four a low rumbling noise, followed by a sharp report, was heard. The house trembled and shook to its foundations. The inmates, some of whom were only awakened by the shock, were seized with an indescribable terror. All the windows were smashed to atoms, the furniture and fixtures in the interior were rattled, and some lighter articles disturbed from their position. The suddenness of the alarm, and the darkness of the night, coupled with an indefinite idea as to the nature and extent of the explosion, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... to him. These sounds—he realized now how he loved them. Verily they were a part of his life. Mid them he had been bred; of them as of food he had grown. That whistle, thin and unmusical; that elusive, indescribable call of prairie male; all these homely sounds that meant so much to him—could he ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... was lighted by a broad arched window crowded full of diamond-shaped glass, tinted through and through by the bloom and glow of a conservatory within. In short the mansion was a picturesque incongruity utterly indescribable, and yet one of the most interesting old ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... urging her pony to a gait which set him reaching at his bit. She sat her saddle in a fashion which belonged solely to the prairie. The long stirrups and straight limb. The lightness, and that indescribable something which suggests the single personality of ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... of artillery, the crashing of falling buildings, the wails, shrieks, and shouts of the terrified inhabitants. The field-pieces rattled past, regiments trotted along, and disappeared around the corners, constituting a scene of indescribable terror and destruction; but here, in the emperor's room, every thing presented a spectacle of peace and repose. Caulaincourt and Berthier sat at their desks, writing. The emperor was slowly walking up and down. He did not even listen to the noise outside; he dictated his ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... when they found that the parson and his wife had been invited to dinner and they themselves left out was indescribable. Never had such an insult been offered them. They had always been the first people of their class in the place, always held their heads up and condescended to the clergy, always been helped first at table, gone first through doors, sat in the right-hand ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... this substance, as is apparent from his own words: "Oh, indescribable mixture, incomparable elixir, antidote beyond all praise! Celestial purgative (if I may be permitted to use the expression), which throws into the shade every medical prescription; which surpasses in fragrance every ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... everlasting day, shining on wanderers in "the valley of the shadow of death;" they are droppings from the overflowing and ineffable cup of mercy; they are presciences of eternity, inestimable, unutterable! and the pen that would describe indescribable perceptions, droops in shame and sorrow at its own imbecility. Such perceptions have visited, do visit us, on this most rapturous of Christmas Days? Is it not a golden day? does it not remove us for a little space from earth, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... courtiers seemed to sink into the carpets and divans and silken and down coverlets; when the sweet-smelling incense rose from the golden censers and intoxicated the brain; when a hundred servants made ready the banquet of indescribable luxury, and carried it in silver dishes, alabaster bowls, and crystal goblets; when youths and maidens, with arms entwined, crowned each other with wreaths of roses; when the fanfares sounded, and ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... dome-shaped huts which constituted the store of Last Notch came into view against a sky of dull velvet as they breasted the last rise. The indescribable homely smell of a wood-fire greeted the nostrils with the force of a spoken welcome. They could hear the gabble of the Kafirs at their supper and the noise ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... spoke his eyes were fixed with cold intensity upon a fringe of gray across the coulee below the little pasture. To the nostrils of the outraged Happy Family was borne that indescribable aroma which betrays the presence of sheep; that aroma which sheepmen love and which cattlemen hate, and which a favorable wind will ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... and argumentative as Hindu thought is, it is less prone than European theology to the vice of distorting transcendental ideas by too stringent definition. It adumbrates the indescribable by metaphors and figures. It is not afraid of inconsistencies which may illustrate different aspects of the infinite, but it rarely tries to cramp the divine within the limits of a logical phrase. Attempts to explain how the divine and human nature were combined ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... failed, by a few inches, in the legs, yet made up for it by fitting a little better than the skin everywhere else. His head stood upon a shirt collar that held it up by the ears, and a cravat, something smaller than a table-cloth, bandaged his throat; his face was narrow, long, and grave, with an indescribable air of ponderous wisdom, which, as Fox said of Thurlow, "proved him necessarily a hypocrite; as it was impossible for any man to be as wise as he looked." Gravity and decorum marked every lineament of his countenance and every line of his body. All the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... But, alas! when my companions at length departed, they left me in no condition to complete a sermon. I fell fast asleep, and was wakened in the morning by the bishop's servant. The dismay I felt is indescribable; I started up—it was nine o'clock: I began to write; but my hand and my mind trembled, and my ideas were in such confusion, that I could not, great genius as I was, produce a beginning sentence in ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... a total stranger. He had no acquaintance to greet him with a friendly welcome; and the next day, as he was jostled by the crowd, and pushed aside by the hurried pedestrian, he realized what it was to be a stranger in a strange land, and an indescribable sensation came upon him, known only to those who have been ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... the routine of life at Mentone); I told him that where one found a kitchen so exquisite, one astonished oneself that the wine was not up to the same form. "Et voila precisement mon cote faible, monsieur," he replied, with an indescribable amplitude of gesture. "Que voulez-vous? Moi, je suis cuisinier!" It was as though Shakespeare, called to account for some such peccadillo as the Bohemian seaport, should answer magnificently that he was a poet. So Follete lives in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the single soldiers where they stood, overthrow them by the sheer weight of horse and car, and crush them and their arms beneath the hoofs and wheels. And where the scythes caught them, men and weapons were cut to shreds. [32] In the midst of indescribable confusion, the chariots rocking among the weltering mounds, Abradatas was thrown out and some of his comrades with him. There they stood, and fought like men, and there they were cut down and died. The Persians, pouring in after them, dealt ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... was in the latest mode of Paris, her gown showed unmistakably the hand of the French dressmaker, while her elegance was essentially that of the Parisienne. There is always a something—something indescribable—about the Frenchwoman which is marked and distinctive, and which the English-bred ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... proudly termed the Switzerland of Canada. Its majestic hills—so grandly rugged—its placid lakes, and its dense and undulating forests lend an indescribable enchantment to the companion and lover of nature, who for the first time beholds their supreme beauty. The tree-topped hills in their altitude are at times lost in the clouds. The lumberman has not yet ventured to ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... and smooth as ever; then higher and higher, sending its rays across the vast level, and turning all to gold. It was between us and the sun now one broad patch of light, but not quite all golden glory, for as I looked right away from the poop-deck, with that indescribable feeling of joy in my breast which comes when the darkness of night and its horrors give place to the life and light of day, I felt a strange contraction about my heart—a ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... She sat in the sunlight with the music in her ears, listening to his abrupt, vivid speech, and a fear came to her which blanched her cheeks and caught at her throat. The hand which held her dainty parasol of lace shook, and an indescribable thrill ran through her veins. She could no more think of this man as a clodhopper, a coarse upstart without manners or imagination. In many ways he fell short of all the usual standards by which the men of her class were judged, yet she suddenly ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... but He garlanded it with blossoms, or a sky but He studded it with stars, or allowed even the smoke of a furnace to ascend but He columned, and turreted, and doled, and scrolled it into outlines of indescribable gracefulness. When I see the apple orchards of the spring and the pageantry of the autumnal forests, I come to the conclusion that if nature ever does join the Church, while she may be a Quaker in the silence of her worship, she never ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... the hotel, drinking, smoking, talking, bargaining, or walked about among the cattle-pens, looking with knowing eyes at the horned people. The owners of the cattle stood near at hand, waiting for offers. There was something indescribable in their aspect, that showed them to be the owners, though they mixed among the crowd. The cattle, brought from a hundred separate farms, or rather from a thousand, seemed to agree very well together, not quarrelling in the least. They almost all had a history, no doubt, if they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... reasoning with inoffensive smiles. An approximate nearness of age, a similarity in ways of thinking, a common love of fresh air, and of the rich landscape scenery through which the coach was lumbering along,—these things, together with an indescribable magnetic something, drew us before long into one of those short-lived traveller's intimacies, in which we unbend with the more complacency because the intercourse is by its very nature transient, and makes no implicit demands ...
— The Message • Honore de Balzac
... stream, their attention being attracted by a gunshot in that direction, which they knew could be only from our own men. In camp during the day I again experimented in the culinary department, and produced two dried-apple pies, one of which Clem and I ate with an indescribable zest, and the other we kept to astonish the absentees with when they should reach camp. I have since learned that my method of pie-making was original I soaked the dried apples till they were soft then made a crust which had plenty of bacon ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... spirit of gifted writers is something too intangible to be firmly grasped, yet its presence is felt as a pervasive and delightful atmosphere. A work is sometimes suffused with the divine touch of genius, as the delicate and indescribable hues of autumn glorify the valleys and mountains. While hovering near the earth for a time, the spirit of genius, as in Shakespeare and Ruskin, sometimes suddenly and spontaneously soars to regions of supernal splendor,—altitudes ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... Van Tassel's mansion. Not those of the bevy of buxom lasses, with their luxurious display of red and white; but the ample charms of a genuine Dutch country tea-table, in the sumptuous time of autumn. Such heaped-up platters of cakes of various and almost indescribable kinds, known only to experienced Dutch housewives! There was the doughty doughnut, the tender olykoek, and the crisp and crumbling cruller; sweet cakes and short cakes, ginger cakes and honey cakes, and the whole family of cakes. And then there were apple pies, and peach pies, and pumpkin ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... fresh oscillations by the shock of the fall, making it utter those thirteen words, and stop. I was sufficiently indignant at the moment, but have since been glad, for I was thereby put upon the notion of collecting a number of cylinders with records, and have been touched with indescribable sensations, sometimes thrilled, at hearing the silence of this Eternity broken by those singing and speaking voices, so life-like, yet most ghostly, of ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... sun; the whole house in a tumult, drivers in a worry, and the sleepy animals now and then joining in the clatter with a vocal performance that is neither a trumpet-call nor a steam-whistle, but an indescribable noise, that begins in agony and abruptly breaks down in despair. It is difficult to get the train in motion. The lady who ordered Succarina has got a strange donkey, and Macaroni has on the wrong saddle. Succarina is a favorite, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... indescribable confusion followed, some crying that the king was dead, while others called for a doctor, and some by name for Dortoman. I expected to see the doors closed and all within secured, that if the man had confederates they ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... poor dear Charles, I sympathize with you keenly all that long night, and in that indescribable waking in the morning, and that dreary day of travel which followed it! By the afternoon you were at home. O piercing change! it was but six or seven weeks before that you had passed the same objects the reverse way, with what different feelings, and ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... Wych Hazel remembered this clasp of her hand, and felt it as often as she remembered it. There was nothing sentimental; it was only a frank clasp, in which her hand for a moment was not her own; and though the clasp did not linger, for that second's continuance it gave her an indescribable impression, she could hardly have told of what. It was not merely the gentleness; she could not separate from that the notion of possession, and of both as being in the mind, to which the hand was an index. But such a thought passes as it comes. Something else in ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... old Crowfoot with two strides stood before the constable, and waving him aside with a gesture of indescribable dignity, took his son in his arms and kissed him on either cheek. Then, stepping back, he addressed him in a voice grave, solemn, and vibrant with emotion. Jerry interpreted ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... united, tumultuous became the joy of the high-souled gods. Then all the gods, the Siddhas, and the great Rishis, uttered the word Jaya, adoring Maheshwara. The triple city then appeared immediately before that god of unbearable energy, that Deity of fierce and indescribable form, that warrior who was desirous of slaying the Asuras. The illustrious deity, that Lord of the universe, then drawing that celestial bow, sped that shaft which represented the might of the whole universe, at the triple city. Upon that foremost of shafts, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... acclimatised, but the fact remains that a very large proportion of us were down with a kind of dysentery, attended by vomiting and violent pains in the stomach. Then there are days when the winds blow from the desert—an indescribable experience. They bring moths and flies with them, and great clouds of sand; it is a genuine labour to breathe, and at noon and for two hours after the temperature in the sun runs up into the "hundred-and-sixties." ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... an indescribable tenderness of tone, "sympathy. I have explained to you how and why I sought you; you, however, have yet to tell me, Madame, why you ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... floe in sight being much to the eastward of our course. This we reached after considerable labour, in the hope of its leading to the northward, which it did for about one mile, and we then came to the same kind of loose ice as before. On the morning of the 9th July, we enjoyed the indescribable comfort of two or three hours' clear, dry weather, but had scarcely hung up our wet clothes, after halting at five A.M., when it again came on to rain; but, as everything was as wet as it could be, we left them ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... industry and trade are active, inventions work miracles, seas are navigated, delicacies are collected from all ends of the world, the waves engulf thousands. All strive, some planning, others acting; the tumult is indescribable. But the ultimate aim of it all, what is it? To sustain ephemeral and tormented individuals through a short span of time in the most fortunate ease with endurable want and comparative freedom from pain, which, however, is at ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... came to me she was a sweet, fragile girl of about twenty. There was a look of indescribable tenderness about her, and a faraway look in her eyes. She might have been a sentimentalist, but there was no room for dreaming in that fight. From the first Kate showed an appreciation of her calling and a spirit that was determined to go through to the end. I have ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... was to run to the belfries in order to sound the tocsin, but they found that the royalists had removed the clappers of the bells. Nothing daunted, they beat the bells all day with hammers and other implements, and so produced an indescribable noise which had a material influence on the nerves of the terrified Neapolitan troops. Being disarmed, the only other help which the inhabitants could render to their deliverers was the erection ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... rioters were able to give full vent to their beastly instincts. Demiovka, a suburb of Kiev, was invaded by a horde of rioters during the night. They first destroyed the saloons, filling themselves with alcohol, and then proceeded to lay fire to the Jewish houses. Under the cover of night indescribable horrors were perpetrated, numerous Jews were beaten to death or thrown into the flames, and many women were violated. A private investigation carried on subsequently brought out more than twenty cases of rape committed on Jewish girls and married women. Only two of the sufferers ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... scourge as tuberculosis. The editorial writer might equally well have used the heading 'Typhoid a National Reproach,' or perhaps even 'Typhoid a National Crime,' since it is an absolutely preventable disease. And as for the typhoid fly, that a creature born in indescribable filth and absolutely swarming with disease germs should practically be invited to multiply unchecked, even in great centers of population, is surely nothing ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... every moment, while the lake for long remained "one burnished sheet of living gold," and Truckee lay utterly out of sight in a hollow filled with lake and cobalt. Before long a carnival of color began which I can only describe as delirious, intoxicating, a hardly bearable joy, a tender anguish, an indescribable yearning, an unearthly music, rich in love and worship. It lasted considerably more than an hour, and though the road was growing very dark, and the train which was to take me thence was fast climbing the Sierras, I could not ride faster ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... have a free passage home in the five caravels which are now waiting to return to Spain. To such a pass have things come in the paradise of Espanola! But the rabble finds life pleasant enough in Xaragua, where they are busy with indescribable pleasures; and for the moment there is no great response to this invitation to be gone. Columbus therefore despatches his ships, with such rabble of colonists, gaol-birds, and mariners as have already had their fill both of ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... with the old woman—to see the apple-tree, and the window-plants, and be still. The shudder of the screw, the blasts of hot air from the engine and cook's galley, the ceaseless jangling, clanging, pumping noises, and all the indescribable smells which haunt a steam-ship, became more wearisome day by day. Even when the cage was hung outside, the, sea breeze seemed to mock him with its freshness. The rich blue of the waters gave him no pleasure, ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... spoke, he looked at her with burning eyes. He was astonished, almost terrified by his hardiness; and what he detected of its effect on her threw him into an indescribable ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... a sound, save the indescribable night voices of the jungle and the rippling of the black waters; yet the big Hollander's ears had heard something different, and as he spoke he swung his huge bulk out of the boat and up the bank by the vines that had served him in coming, disappearing from ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... with an indescribable sound, rather like the snarl of an infuriated beast than an expression of a reasoning creature. Dashing down the sand, he plunged into the Nile and swam with superhuman speed for the ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... down here the day before Lady Nottingham and the rest of the party were to arrive, and they found plenty to occupy them. The house had not been used since Easter, and wore that indescribable look of uninhabitableness which results from a thorough house-cleaning. Everything, even in the irregular hall, looked angular and uncomfortable; chairs were set square to tables; tables were set at mathematically precise angles; blinds were ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... Ibarra to obey. He exchanged the small silver trowel for a larger iron one, which made some of the people smile. He advanced quietly and descended the stairs. Elias looked at him with an indescribable expression. If you had seen him, you would have thought that all his life was concentrated in his eyes. The yellow man looked down into the abyss opening ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... accustomed to regard you from a distance, that I wonder at my own presumption when I touch, however lightly, on that theme. But to one who—I may say, who felt no common interest in my mother once—it may be something to hear, now that all is past, with what indescribable feelings of affection I have, in my obscurity, regarded him; with what pain and reluctance I have kept aloof from his encouragement, when a word of it would have made me rich; yet how I have felt it fit that I should hold my course, content to know him, and to be unknown. ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... the question, there was an indescribable look of painful emotion on her brow. It did not escape Gertrude's eye, and was not to her perfectly unintelligible. She had conceived an idea—why, she did not know—that these recent tidings of hers would not be altogether agreeable to ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... fire, and it gave her back a picture of the young man dressed in the hideous prison garb, with the wavy hair cut close; with the prison look, that indescribable look of degradation and despair, stamped on his ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... affected, to a little lady seated, or rather reclining on a low ottoman close by, something that caused her to start as if the gallant officer was not altogether unknown to her, but her memory would not at the moment serve her, yet a feeling of mistrust, a sort of almost indescribable sensation of disquietude came over her as she listened to the polite nothings that issued from his lips; but fearing to attract observation she quietly withdrew, and entering the upper end of the ball room summoned her chobdah and ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... minutes of inky blackness, of indescribable terror, of flying missiles armed with death, Cyclona lay unconscious. When she opened her eyes a calm light of the evenness of twilight had spread over the track of the cyclone, and her head lay pillowed on Hugh Walsingham's shoulder. ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... mountains, ooooooo-ow-wow-wow! a long wailing crescendo beginning softly, like a sound in a dream, and swelling into a roar that waked the sleeping echoes and set them jumping like startled goats from crag to crag. Instantly the huskies answered, every clog breaking out into indescribable frenzied wailings, as a collie responds in agony to certain chords of music that stir all the old wolf nature sleeping within him. For five minutes the uproar was appalling; then it ceased abruptly and the huskies ran wildly here and there among the rocks. From ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... years ago. The soldiers of Hannibal doing massacre, the perishing mercenaries, supported my closest gaze, and left no curiosity unsatisfied. (Alas! could I but see it again, or remember clearly what was shown tome!) And over all lay a glory of sunshine, an indescribable brilliancy which puts light and warmth into my mind whenever I try to recall it. The delight of these phantasms was well worth the ten days' illness which paid for them. After this night they never returned; I hoped for their renewal, but in vain. When I spoke of the experience ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... that met us on going into the so-called hospital grounds was something indescribable. The land was perfectly level; no drainage whatever; covered with long, tangled grass; skirted by trees, brush, and shrubbery; a few little dog-tents not much larger than could have been made of an ordinary table-cloth thrown over a short rail, and under these lay huddled ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... death, or the preparation for death—every road and footpath crammed with it, every field trampled by it, every woodland shattered by it, every stream running thick with its pollution. The sour smell of marching men, the stale taint of unclean fires, the stench of beasts—the acrid, indescribable odor that hangs on the sweating flanks of armies seemed ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... question: How, in the name of all that is rational, can Illiterates control and operate a system of socialized Literacy? Who but Literates can keep such a program from disintegrating into complete and indescribable confusion? ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... was indescribable. This old tree plaza, about which the early city was built, is now in the centre of Chinatown, of the Italian district and of the "Barbary Coast," the "Tenderloin" of the Western metropolis. It is the chief slum district of the city. The tremor here ran up the Chinatown hill and shook ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... the road and springing over the puddles, I thought to myself that it was small wonder such a wench was pestered in a common soldier's camp. For she had about her everything to allure the grosser class—a something—indescribable perhaps—but which even such a man as I had become unwillingly aware of. And I must have been very conscious of it, for it made me restless and vaguely ashamed that I should condescend so far as even to notice it. More than that, it annoyed me not a little that I should bestow any thought ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... ludicrousness of his predicament had the effect of turning the whole adventure into merriment among those who remained in the establishment; and availing ourselves of the clamorous mirth of the parties, we made our escape from the place with a feeling, on my part, of indescribable relief. ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... have her own way, would permit. Though the man was old, you could not call him aged. One-eyed and crippled, still, marking the muscular arm, the expansive chest, you would have scarcely called him broken or infirm. And hence there was a certain indescribable pathos in his whole appearance, as if Fate had branded, on face and form, characters in which might be read her agencies on career and mind,—plucked an eye from intelligence, shortened one limb for life's progress, yet left whim sparkling out ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... elasticity of youth had banished all depression from mind and body, and she sprang eagerly to the window that she might see the effects of the storm, expecting to witness its ravages on every side. Imagine her wonder and delight when, instead of widespread wreck and ruin, a scene of indescribable beauty met her eyes! The snow had draped all things in white. The trees that had seemed so gaunt and skeleton-like as they writhed and moaned in the gale were now clothed with a beauty surpassing that of their summer foliage, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... the almost unbroken surges of music that come from the field outside, from the multitude beneath the almond blossom laden trees. Movement is without volition in the spirit stage; attraction that follows a hidden impulse, that seems indescribable at first, directs them. It is only as the process of consolidation in the City of Light individualizes, that the spirits become, as you would say, human. But it is a humanity of great beauty. Material particles invade or transfuse them, replacing the diaphanous phosphorescent spirit ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... them as then entered the house of God, looking for the last one to darken the door. The impatience and anxiety with which they waited, and the bliss they anticipated on the eventful day, is altogether indescribable. Those that have been so fortunate as to embark in such a noble enterprise know all its realities; and those who have not had this inestimable privilege will have to taste its sweets before they can tell to others its joys, its comforts, and its Heaven-born ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... after the first attack. The Rector through that dark time was untouched by the contagious dread which overpowered his parishioners, and his presence carried confidence and health. On the worst day, sultry, stifling, with no sun, an indescribable terror crept abroad, and Mr. Cobb, standing at his gate, was overcome by it. In five minutes he had heard of two deaths, and he began to feel what were called "premonitory symptoms." He carried a brandy flask in his pocket, brandy being then considered a remedy, and ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... was no artist. The sense had not been cultivated, but the feeling was born in her. So the British Museum was to her something quite beyond fairyland; a region of wonders, where past ages went by in procession; or better, stood still for her eyes to gaze upon them. The Tower was another place of indescribable fascination. How many visits they made to it I dare not say; Dolly never had enough; and her delight was so much of a feast to her father that he did not grudge the time nor mind what he would have called the dawdling. Indeed it was a sort of refuge to Mr. Copley, when business ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... different parts of the brain may have something to do with the character of the function, but this is a contested point. Education increases the mental efficiency, no doubt, but it is too late in the day to attribute everything to that. So that we are obliged to resort to that indescribable condition called quality, as the chief source and origin of the differences of mental ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... the "Doric." It is now, like everything else, in a state of lamentable decay. The honeycombed eighteen pounder, which was the signal gun of former years, is choked with drifting sand, and the air of misery about the place is indescribable. ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... his head like the quills of the porcupine; his forehead was somewhat narrow, but his features were neither plain nor coarse; there was, however, a startled, frightened look about them, and an otherwise painful and indescribable expression, which told too plainly that the ruling power of the intellect had been overthrown, and that the living machine could no longer be altogether held responsible for its acts. Such, in appearance, was Lawrence ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... theology of his priests, throws himself into the embrace of Mephistopheles. That is human nature. Exactly the same thing was done in the days of Paul, and exactly the same thing he himself did. There was the indescribable misery of the age, and there were the knowledge and theories of that overburdened century, and no answer, no reply to the questions addressed to heaven and eternity; and they went to the fountains of mysticism and secret ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... There is an indescribable feeling of solitude in all houses in the environs of Mexico, a vastness, a desolation, such as I never before experienced in the most lonely dwellings in other countries. It is not sad—the sky is too bright, and nature too smiling, and the air we inhale too pure for that. It is a sensation ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... wounded men, sometimes over a wounded arm or leg or head, sometimes over a whole man, sometimes stretched as netting in the windows. And no ten thousand dollars was ever better spent, for the flies occasioned indescribable suffering as well ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... the ideal picturesque accessories. It stands at the corner of two meeting roadways. It is set in an ideal pastoral frame—a frame of sleeping fields, of waving tree-tops, of an enchanting, indescribable snarl of bushes, vines, and wild flowers. In the adjoining fields, beneath the tree-boughs, ran the long, low line of the ancient manoir—now turned ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... The indescribable yet almost overwhelming pathos of the tones affected Dr. Grey much as the tremolo-stop in some organ-overture in a dimly-lighted cathedral; and, as the singer seemed to pour her whole aching heart and wearied soul into the concluding "Ah! ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... spoken when a light so vivid and dazzling that it seemed the whole lustre of the fiery element was concentrated therein broke around us, filling the whole atmosphere, and covering rock, tree and mountain with a glare indescribable. The mule of the peasant tumbled prostrate, while the horse I rode reared himself perpendicularly, and turning round dashed down the hill at headlong speed which for some time it was impossible to check. The lightning was followed ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... indescribable thrill through the house, the sound of a heavy fall. They all started up from their seats to hear what it was. Then Ursula, with a cry of apprehension, rushed downstairs, and the others after her. Betsy, alarmed, had come out of the kitchen, followed by her assistant, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... What he said, wild and wanton though it was, was beginning to fill me with a sense of the most extreme discomfort. His sentences, in some strange, indescribable way, seemed, as they came from his lips, to warp my limbs; to enwrap themselves about me; to confine me, tighter and tighter, within, as it were, swaddling clothes; to make me more and more helpless. I was already conscious that whatever mad freak he chose to set me on, I should have no option ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... up from his seat and came round to her side of the table. He had a vague intention of imprisoning her hand, and perhaps her waist, but some indescribable quality held him off. It was difficult to suppose she did not half guess what was in his mind, and yet, without showing the smallest consciousness or shyness, she faced him with a look so boyishly frank and open it utterly ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... fact simply. Essentially she was perhaps of no tangible substance; a spirit, a dream, a frenzy, a conception, an aroma, an epitomized sex, a light of the eye, a parting of the lips. God only knew what she really was; Pierston did not. She was indescribable. ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... the girl in the photograph, older, more beautiful—the same soft, sweet contour of face, the same dark eyes that had looked at him in MacGregor's office, filled with an indescribable sadness now, instead of the laughing joy of girlhood. In another moment he would have responded to her hesitation, to the pathetic tremble of her lips, but before words could form themselves she had turned and was gone. And yet at the ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... the following confession of faith, as the present belief of the philosophical Hindoos, concerning the nature of God, viz.:—"God is invisible, independent, ever-living, glorious, uncorrupt, all-wise, the ever-blessed, the almighty; his perfections are indescribable and past finding out; he rules over all, supports all, destroys all, and remains after the destruction of all; there is none like him; he is silence; he is free from passion, from birth, &c., and from increase and decrease, from fatigue, the need of refreshment, &c. He possesses the ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward |
