"Undefinable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dreams thus savagely, Sibyll started, and saw the eager, darkened face of her father. Its expression was peculiar and undefinable, for it was not threatening, angry, stern; there was a vacancy in the eyes, a strain in the features, and yet a wild, intense animation lighting and pervading all,—it was as the face of one walking in his sleep, and, at the first confusion of waking, Sibyll thought indeed that such was her father's ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... beheld a figure immediately before me. I was astonished at the sight, for I had perceived no one approach—had heard no footstep advance towards me, and was satisfied that no one besides myself could be in the garden. The presence of the figure inspired me with an undefinable awe! and, I can scarce tell why, but a thrilling presentiment convinced me that it was a supernatural visitant. Without motion—without life—without substance, it seemed; yet still the outward character of life was there. I started to ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... another Gammon had been too much for him, and always gained his purposes without giving Quirk any handle of dissatisfaction. In fact, Quirk was thoroughly afraid of Gammon, and Gammon knew it. In the present instance, an undefinable but increasing suspicion and discomfort forced him presently back again into ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... am well enough," replied Malcolm hurriedly. "If we come to that, you have rather a weedy appearance yourself;" for Cedric looked decidedly thinner, and his eyes were almost unnaturally bright. He seemed older, too, and changed in some undefinable way; but he had never looked handsomer. Malcolm forgot his own troubles in his anxiety to prevent his protege falling into the hands of the adventurer, Saul Jacobi. For the moment his own soul seemed to yearn over the boy who was his sisters' darling and ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... gentlemen were ambitious of the honour of Miss Hauton's hand; but, to their disappointment, she declined dancing any more; and though Buckhurst Falconer had determined not to have stayed, nor to dance with her, yet an undefinable perverse curiosity induced him to delay a few minutes to determine whether she conversed as well as she danced. The sound of her voice was sweet and soft, and there was an air of languor in her whole person and manner, with an apparent indifference to general admiration, which ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... during Eternity uttered forth, clothed with form, and the attributes that constitute them matter, the First Principle is Single and First, and yet not the VERY Illimitable Deity, incomprehensible, undefinable; but Himself in so far as manifested by the Creative Thought. To compare littleness with infinity,—Arkwright, as inventor of the spinning-jenny, and not the man Arkwright otherwise and beyond that. All we can know of the Very God is, compared to His Wholeness, only as an infinitesimal fraction ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... and similar journeys, by means of the Diary, enthuses my soul with an undefinable longing to have been with him. The excitement, and danger, and hurry and bustle constantly incident to travel at the present day were all unfelt and unfeared by ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... began. It was only George he came to see? She brought out her work and began to sew. He would not come: only George was fit to be his friend. Why should he heed her poor old father, or her?—with the undefinable awe of an unbred mind for his power and wealth of culture. And yet—something within her at the moment rose up royal—his equal. He knew her, as she might be! Between them there was something deeper than the shallow ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... and pleasant evening towards the close of April, and the low descending sun was shedding the mellow light of his parting beams over the joyful face of reanimating nature. The invalid, during all the fore part of the day, had suffered greatly from pain—that general and undefinable distress which is so frequently found to be the precursor of approaching dissolution. To this had succeeded a sort of lethargic sleep, from which it was not easy to arouse her, so that she could be made to take any notice of ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... been pointed out by how slight a boundary the epigram is kept distinct from other forms of poetry, and how in extreme cases its essence may remain undefinable. The two fragments of Theognis and one of Mimnermus included here[5] illustrate this. They are examples of a large number like them, which are not, strictly speaking, epigrams; being probably passages from continuous poems, selected, at least ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... broken, mingled, discordant shriek as of a dozen voices on different keys uttering cries of terror and despair. There was the confusion of one person falling over another; there was the wild grasping for support, the seizing of each other's garments and arms, the undefined and undefinable struggle of the first desperate minute after a boat has capsized, the scream that dies to a gurgle in the water and then breaks out afresh, louder and sharper than before, and then is suddenly smothered into a gurgle ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... face of an unrelenting, outspoken opposition. It was in the Meeker front room that he first realized his mundane existence was in danger. He could give no description of what happened beyond the fact that suddenly he was bathed in a cold, revolting air. It hung about him with the undefinable feel and smell of death. A rotten air, he described it, and could think of nothing better; remaining, he thought, for half a minute, filling him with instinctive abject ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... being thus requested by the great sages, whose thoughts were profound, saluted them all with reverence and gave them a comprehensive answer, saying: Be it heard! This universe existed only in the first divine idea yet unexpanded, as if involved in darkness, imperceptible, undefinable, undiscoverable by reason, and undiscovered by revelation, as if it were wholly immersed in sleep; then the sole, self-existing power, himself undiscovered, but making this world discernible, with five elements and ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... was sharing the common lot of husbands, who proverbially mistake the early ardors of housekeeping for a sign of settled domesticity. Alexa, at any rate, was refuting his theory as inconsiderately as a seedling defeats the gardener's expectations. An undefinable change had come over her. In one sense it was a happy one, since she had grown, if not handsomer, at least more vivid and expressive; her beauty had become more communicable: it was as though she had learned the conscious exercise of intuitive attributes and now ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... his sorrows? who shall make An estimate of his deep, burning woes, And place them all in order, rank on rank? Language is weak to tell the heart's deep, wrongs. We think, and muse, and in our endless thought We strive to grasp, with all the mind's vast strength, The undefinable extent of spirit grief, And fail to ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... with eager eye and excited cheek among them. To leap into the bows of the canoe, and disappear under the foliage, was the work of a single instant. All listened breathlessly for the slightest sound; and then every heart throbbed with the most undefinable emotions, as his lips were heard giving utterance to the deep ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... letter lying on the table. It had raised in her mind, not a doubt, but an undefined, undefinable anxiety. He saw the glance, and said: "I was writing to one who has been as a sister to me. She was my mother's sister though she is almost as young as I. Her name is Faith. There is nothing there of what concerns thee and me, though it would ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... only say this, it was not so much what we saw or heard (in which you might fairly suppose that we were the dupes of our own excited fancy, or the victims of imposture in others) that drove us away, as it was an undefinable terror which seized both of us whenever we passed by the door of a certain unfurnished room, in which we neither saw nor heard anything. And the strangest marvel of all was, that for once in my life I agreed with ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... influence had she, then, fallen? To what undefinable sentiments had she obeyed? And if she had only tolerated! But she had done more: she had actually encouraged. By detaining her mother when she wished to go home (and she had detained her), had she not said to this unknown?—"Go on, I allow it: I ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... the almost blasphemous frivolity of suggesting to any living being that Kerfol was the place for him. "Is it possible that any one could NOT see—?" I wondered. I did not finish the thought: what I meant was undefinable. I stood up and wandered toward the gate. I was beginning to want to know more; not to SEE more—I was by now so sure it was not a question of seeing—but to feel more: feel all the place had to communicate. "But to get in one will have to rout out the keeper," I thought reluctantly, ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... good, but I still found the remoter darkness of the place, and its perfect stillness, too stimulating for the imagination. The echoing of the stir and crackling of the fire was no sort of comfort to me. The shadow in the alcove at the end in particular, had that undefinable quality of a presence, that odd suggestion of a lurking, living thing, that comes so easily in silence and solitude. At last, to reassure myself, I walked with a candle into it, and satisfied myself that there was nothing tangible there. I stood that candle upon ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... differing from the coarser gloom which we have been examining, in that it can attach itself to minds of the highest purity and keenness, and, indeed, does so to these more than to inferior ones. It is an undefinable pensiveness, leading to great severity of precept, mercilessness in punishment, and dark or discouraging ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... scheme for forcing its way through Eastern Virginia; and am not the better reconciled to it by Grant's campaign. There is no sound success for the North now, unless they put the 'coloured' race politically on equal terms with the 'whites,' and not to do so when 'colour' is legally undefinable, and when the only loyal citizens in loyal provinces are 'coloured,' is an alarming infatuation. I suppose they must suffer more and more, until they resolve that the slave owners of Kentucky, and ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... nosrtils, lips, chin, and the lilac of her throat. Her features were clear-cut, flawless; the expression exquisitely grave and pure; the large grey eyes had that steady glow which shows a firm and undisturbed will. In some undefinable way he found himself thinking of the vague objects of his dreams, delicate and subtle things, dew, starlight, and transparencies rose up by some affinity. He rejected them—not those—then a strong warrior with a look of pity on his face ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... my sight and I groped hopelessly forward, praying in vain for an end of misery. Out of such a boyhood there came—as what else could come?—a manhood all imperfect, clothed with gloom, haunted by horror, and familiar with undefinable terrors which have weighed upon my heart until I have cried to myself that it would break—until I have almost prayed that it would break and thereby free me from the bondage of my pitiless master, Woe! To-day ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... hope we do not!" exclaimed Tom, as he turned back to his work, with an undefinable sense ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... of self-love and benevolence when it arises, is reduced in favour of the second by the intervention of the moral sense, which does not hold out future rewards and pleasures of self-approbation, but decides for the generous part by 'an immediate undefinable perception.' So at least, if human nature were properly cultivated, although it is true that in common life men are wont to follow their particular affections, generous and selfish, without thought of extensive benevolence or calm self-love; and it is found necessary ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... offensive and others an agreeable odor; some contain asphalt in large quantity, others paraffine, etc. Thus they form a heterogeneous assemblage of liquid hydrocarbons, of which naphtha and maltha may be said to form the extremes, and which have little in common, except their undefinable name. The causes of these differences are but imperfectly understood, but we know that they are in part dependent on the nature of the organic material that has furnished the petroleums, and in part upon influences affecting ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... discouragement for which she rebuked herself as childish, walked sadly home again; and when she entered the vacant dining-room, she could not help bursting into tears. It is such vague undefinable states of susceptibility as this—states of excitement or depression, half mental, half physical—that determine many a tragedy in women's lives. Janet could scarcely eat anything at her solitary dinner: she tried to fix her attention on a book in vain; she walked about the garden, ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... silence, with her head bowed upon her hand; recalling the scattered fragments of the sonorous verses, and wondering why it was that, when each line had seemed so perfect in itself, and every thought so pure and noble in its purport and conception, the whole should have left upon her mind such an undefinable impress of dissatisfaction. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... sole knowledge accessible to us, could not be arrived at in a very early stage of the progress of thought. Men have not even now left off hoping for other knowledge, nor believing that they have attained it; and that, when attained, it is, in some undefinable manner, greatly more precious than mere knowledge of sequences and co-existences. The true doctrine was not seen in its full clearness even by Bacon, though it is the result to which all his speculations tend: still less by Descartes. It was, ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... upon Giraumont and Gawtrey, who appeared talking together, very amicably. The younger novice of that night, equally silent, seated towards the bottom of the table, was not less watchful than Birnie. An uneasy, undefinable foreboding had come over him since the entrance of Monsieur Giraumont; this had been increased by the manner of Mr. Gawtrey. His faculty of observation, which was very acute, had detected something false in the chief's ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of Something unknown; and, after her arrival, he would have been well content could he have been assured of an early opportunity of attending her obsequies and certain of a long-postponed resurrection; well content, and often wildly happy (with Lucille) ... but for the curious undefinable fear of Something ... Something about which he had the most awful dreams ... Something in a blue room with a mud floor. Something that seemed at times to move beneath his foot, making his blood freeze, his knees smite together, the ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... of State, Lord Melbourne. Nevertheless, it could no longer be concealed, nay, it was invariably admitted, that the political situation had been largely and most unexpectedly changed, and that there was a prospect, dim, perhaps, yet not undefinable, of the conduct of public affairs again falling to the alternate management of ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... returning life. His lips moved slowly at last, as if he would speak; and Maggie, bending low to catch the faintest sound, heard him utter the name of "Rose." In Maggie's bosom there was no feeling for the stranger save that of pity, and yet that one word "Rose" thrilled her with a strange undefinable emotion, awaking at once a yearning desire to know something of her who bore that beautiful name, and who to the young man was undoubtedly the one in ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... men-at-arms rubbed their eyes and looked on in silent wonder: for one of the pair was none other than the fairy maiden who had lived so long amongst them, and had endeared herself even to these rude spirits by her grace and sweetness and undefinable charm; the other, that youth with the wonderful eyes and saint-like face who had been captured and borne away to Saut after the battle before St. Jean d'Angely, and whose body they all believed had long ago been lying beneath the sullen waters of the moat, where so many ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... calm. I feel in it the languid mind of the convalescent, almost the heart of a young girl whose tears are ready to flow, though she is smiling a little at her own sad dreams. It seems to me that Strauss must have a secret affection for this work, which owes its inspiration to the undefinable impressions of convalescence. His fever fell asleep in it, and certain passages are full of the caressing touch of nature, and recall Berlioz's Les Troyens. But too often the music is superficial and conventional, and the tyranny of Wagner makes itself felt—a rare enough occurrence in ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... it will be remembered, that had prompted them to go on pilgrimage; and me, too, the spring was filling with strange, undefinable longings, and though I flattered myself that I had set out in pursuance of a definitely taken resolve, I had really no more freedom in the matter than the children who followed at the heels ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... of Bethesda. (On the right side of the church, in its centre, the lowest of the two pictures which occupy the wall.) A noble work, but eminently disagreeable, as must be all pictures of this subject; and with the same character in it of undefinable want, which I have noticed in the two preceding works. The main figure in it is the cripple, who has taken up his bed; but the whole effect of this action is lost by his not turning to Christ, but flinging it on his shoulder ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... fell upon the woman's soul. It was like a heavy nightmare weight that might only be felt, not seen, and could not be shaken off. But the Countess de Mattos had experienced this undefinable misery before, when the reaction came after taking too large a dose of chlorodyne with her "solace." She hoped that it was merely this now—that it was no real warning of trouble or ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... guarding the corridor; of Paredes and Doctor Groom, held downstairs by Graham; of the county authorities hurrying to seize this evidence that would convict him; and he realized that his duty and his excuse were clear. He understood that just now he had been captured by a force undefinable in terms of the world he knew. For a moment he eluded the stealthy fleshless hands of its impalpable skirmishers. He reached impulsively out to the dead man. He was about to place his fingers in the pocket, which, after all was said and ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... came to myself, to an undefinable sense of the tremendous pressure of nothingness. Darkness! it was not that; yet it was as little light. It was as if we lay in a dim, luminous chaos, ourselves an integral part of its self-containment. I did not stir; but I spoke: and my strange voice broke the enchantment. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... and wrinkled like a withered apple, his eyes a misty blue, his big nose marked like a network of veins, his hands glazed and reddened, like his face, by wind and weather; standing, even under his mayoral robes, like a jockey. Of course he had the undefinable air of breeding; no one could have mistaken his class. But he was an undistinguished, very ordinary looking little man; and indeed he had done nothing for the past half century to distinguish himself above his fellows. There are thousands of his type, masters of English country ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... And he stepped as noiselessly as possible, notwithstanding he meditated an encounter with nothing more than an inanimate object. But his imagination was always on the alert, and as he often feared dangers that arose undefinable and indescribable in his mind, it was not without some trepidation that he had separated himself from the horses and groped his way toward the object that had so much terrified his pony. He paused within a few feet of the object, and waited for the next flash of lightning ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... arrangement nor motion of material particles can act as a bridge by which we can cross over into the domain of intelligence.... What imaginable link is there between certain movements of certain molecules in my brain, on the one hand, and on the other hand primitive, undefinable, undeniable facts such as: I have the sensation of softness, I smell the odour of a rose, I hear the sound of an organ, I ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... daughter with his bloodshot eyes. She had been up all night, and her hair was tossed, and her eyes smarted; but beside him she looked so fresh, so upright, so brave and strong, that he himself in some undefinable way felt the contrast, and shrank from her. He turned his uneasy gaze towards the bed; he would vent his spite on that weak wife of his—Martha should know what it was to keep a man with a splitting headache waiting for his tea. He made ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... in darkness, imperceptible, undefinable, undiscoverable, and undiscovered; as if immersed ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... no isolation so weird in its feeling of cut-offness as that of a night camp in the heart of the bush. The flickering camp-fires draw all that is human and tangible into its charmed circle, and without, all is undefinable darkness and uncertainty. Yet it was in this night camp among the dark pines, with even the stars shut out, that we learnt that out-bush "Houselessness" need not mean "Homelessness"—a discovery that destroyed all hope that "this ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... matter of unmixed rejoicing that this latter necessary of healthful life is independent of theological ink, and that its evolution is insured in the interaction of human souls as certainly as the evolution of science or art, with which, indeed, it is but a twin ray, melting into them with undefinable limits. ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... distance, others apparently close at hand; some obviously from the land to the rear of the party, and others quite as obviously from the water in their front. And, most disturbing consideration of all, every one of them was absolutely unfamiliar, therefore in some vague, undefinable fashion, the more alarming. This effect was quickly made manifest by the agitated murmurings of the Indians, and the haste with which they replenished the dying fire, heaping on fuel with such a lavish hand that, for the space ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... near him,—but was already seated with the Testament open ready to read as requested. The Cardinal raised himself in his chair,—a sense of lightness, and freedom, and ease, possessed him,—the hopeless and tired feeling which had a few minutes since weighed him down with an undefinable languor was gone,—and his voice had gained new strength and energy when he ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... taken, and I believe with success." The same belief is found both in North and South Wales. It is also testified to by a Scottish clergyman, who moreover adduces the following conversation as illustrative of it and of "an undefinable sort of awe about unbaptized infants, as well as an idea of uncanniness in having them without baptism in the house," which is entertained among the labouring classes in the north-east of Scotland. "Oh, ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... conditions, which cannot be methodically proved for want of a precise principle by which they may be tested; and they, therefore, depend upon Immethodical Induction, that is, upon the examination of as many instances as can be found, relying for the rest upon the undefinable principle of the Uniformity of Nature, since we are not able to connect them with any of its definite modes enumerated in chap. xiii. Sec. 7. To this subject we shall return in chap. xix., after treating of Methodical ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... mixture of what is admirable in his composition; and as for these two girls—well, I am even more in love than you are, Philip. The elder is the handsomer, perhaps; she is very handsome; but your favourite is my favourite. Lois is lovely. There is a strange, fresh, simple, undefinable charm about the girl that makes one her captive. Even me, a woman. She wins upon me daily with her sweet unconscious ways. But nevertheless I am uneasy when I remember what I am here for, and what you are expecting. I fear I am acting the part of an innocent swindler, ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... say "With Aline Joyeuse," but a feeling of restraint stopped him, an undefinable sentiment, a sense of shame at pronouncing her name in the studio which had heard so many others. There are things that do not go together, one scarcely knows why. Paul preferred to reply with a falsehood, which brought him at once to ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... depth as almost to denote disease; small, bright, sparkling eyes they were, made to seem smaller and brighter by a constant girlish twinkle that softened and lighted up their laughter. They were neither brown eyes nor blue eyes, but were of an undefinable, changing gray, a gray that was not a color, but a light! Emotion found expression therein in the flame of fever, pleasure in the flashing rays of a sort of intoxication, passion in phosphorescence. Her short, turned-up nose, with large, dilated, palpitating nostrils, was one of those ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... along, Mr. Snagsby observes, as a novelty, that however quick their pace may be, his companion still seems in some undefinable manner to lurk and lounge; also, that whenever he is going to turn to the right or left, he pretends to have a fixed purpose in his mind of going straight ahead, and wheels off, sharply, at the very last ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... that Milly entered the great infirmary, the charm of her childhood laid its spell upon all who came near her. Not only was the gloomy ward brighter for her presence, but patients and nurses were infected with her strange personality and undefinable influence. Even the doctors lingered a moment longer at her bedside, looking pensively into the light of those eyes whose fires had been kindled under sunny skies, and at the beauty of that face, kissed into loveliness ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... slaughter of a succession of his principal rajahs who aspired to be his ministers, and each of whom raised himself a step nearer the summit of his desire upon the butchered body of his predecessor. A glow, perhaps, of undefinable pleasure may have warmed the heart ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... in the recess of a window. We three remained seated round the table from which the dark maid was removing the cups and the plates with brusque movements. I gazed frankly at Dona Rita's profile, irregular, animated, and fascinating in an undefinable way, at her well-shaped head with the hair twisted high up and apparently held in its place by a gold arrow with a jewelled shaft. We couldn't hear what she said, but the movement of her lips and the play of her features were full of charm, full of interest, expressing both ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... contemplation of this depressing waste was the sight of the Bunner Sisters' window. Its panes were always well-washed, and though their display of artificial flowers, bands of scalloped flannel, wire hat-frames, and jars of home-made preserves, had the undefinable greyish tinge of objects long preserved in the show-case of a museum, the window revealed a background of orderly counters and white-washed walls in pleasant ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... pursued her inquiries no further that night. But, although she affected to treat the matter thus lightly, it had, somehow, taken a painful hold upon her imagination, and left in her mind those undefinable and ominous sensations, which, in certain mental temperaments, seem to foreshadow the approach of ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... long he had been asleep, when he started up in bed with an undefinable impression that something was wrong. He sat rubbing his eyes, and but half awake—a confused sound, he knew not what, fell upon his ear; it seemed as if some dreadful strife was going on outside his window, something seemed in a terrible fury, ...
— Leslie Ross: - or, Fond of a Lark • Charles Bruce
... glad to get to sea again. There is an undefinable feeling of relief, almost of joy, when the regular throbbing of the engines begins and the ship rolls and ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... length, rushing along therein helter-skelter, and carrying thick rain upon its back. The rain is followed by hailstones which fly through the defile in battalions—rolling, hopping, ricochetting, snapping, clattering down the shelving banks in an undefinable haze of confusion. The earthen sides of the fosse seem to quiver under the drenching onset, though it is practically no more to them than the blows of Thor upon the giant of Jotun-land. It is impossible to proceed further till the storm somewhat abates, and ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... brother's nature (not all wholly assumed) which was just what Selah had first been drawn to admire in Herbert himself. It wasn't merely the originality of his general point of view: it was something more deep-seated and undefinable than that—in a word, his idiosyncrasy. Selah Briggs, with her peculiar fiery soul and rebellious nature, found in both the Le Bretons something that seemed at once to satisfy her wants, to fulfil ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... may say that to be reared a member of an Establishment is in itself a lesson of religious moderation, and a help towards [xxiii] culture and harmonious perfection. Instead of battling for his own private forms for expressing the inexpressible and defining the undefinable, a man takes those which have commended themselves most to the religious life of his nation; and while he may be sure that within those forms the religious side of his own nature may find its satisfaction, he has leisure and composure to satisfy ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... girl of fourteen, the champion, protectress, and playfellow of every brat under three years old, whom she jumps, dances, dandles, and feeds all day long. A very attractive person is that child-loving girl. I have never seen any one in her station who possessed so thoroughly that undefinable charm, the lady-look. See her on a Sunday in her simplicity and her white frock, and she might pass for an earl's daughter. She likes flowers too, and has a profusion of white stocks under her window, as pure ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... heard the distant strains of the organ, a sad harmony to an undefinable chant, the wail of a soul longing to break these earthly bonds. I listened with every sense, scarcely breathing; plunged, like Captain Nemo, in that musical ecstasy, which was drawing him in spirit to ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... shut in between two black walls, and only a strip of dark sky, spangled with stars, was visible above their heads. And as they stepped along, pacing this path which resembled a dark stream flowing beneath the black star-sprent sky, they were often thrilled with undefinable emotion, and lowered their voices, although there was nobody to hear them. Surrendering themselves as it were to the silent waves of night, over which they seemed to drift, they recounted to one another, with lovers' rapture, the ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... friend who had at last a commercial wireless "televue," as he called it on the spur of the moment, when Jane, the aged caretaker, announced Dr. Scott. The new doctor was a youthfully dressed man, clean-shaven, but with an undefinable air of being much older than his smooth face led one to suppose. As he had a large practice, he said, he would beg our pardon for interrupting but would not ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... facts, they gave her no shock—they left the reflex of the man in her mind still unspotted, unimpaired. How could this be? Simply because they left unaltered the conviction that this man believed in God, and that the desire of his own heart brought him into some real, however undefinable, relation to him who was yet nearer to him than that desire itself, and whose presence ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... the heart unexhausted, and the passions unconsumed! Years, long years, since then had rolled away, and yet, perhaps, one unconscious attraction that drew Maltravers so suddenly towards Evelyn was a something indistinct and undefinable that reminded him of Alice. There was no similarity in their features; but at times a tone in Evelyn's voice, a "trick of the manner," an air, a gesture, recalled him, over the gulfs of Time, to ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wondrous a field for the exercise of his perfected faculty; and I saw then how in the real, the great collector's appreciations the keenest scientific perception is suffused with imaginative sensibility, and how it's to the latter undefinable quality that in the last resort he ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... how it came. The whole world seemed to pale and to whiten, and that was all. There was no sunrise. It merely seemed as if all of Nature—very gradually—was soaking itself full of some light; it was dim at first, but never grey; and then it became the whitest, the clearest, the most undefinable light. There were no shadows. Under the brush of the wild land which I was skirting by now there seemed to be quite as much of luminosity as overhead. The mist was the thinnest haze, and it seemed to derive its whiteness as much from the virgin ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... describe the insane hatred that had kindled his heart into a volume of hellish flame. It appeared, indeed, that his jealousy had grounds, so far as that Walter Brome had actually sought the love of Alice, who also had betrayed an undefinable, but powerful interest in the unknown youth. The latter, in spite of his passion for Alice, seemed to return the loathful antipathy of her brother; the similarity of their dispositions made them like joint possessors of an individual nature, which ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with the addition of a little boyfriend, gathered together in a very purposeful and alarming way in the library There was about them an undefinable air of the chase, for they were all well-booted and belted, and Peggy had a large clasp-knife dangling at her waist. "It is for the hare," she said, "when ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... doubtful, dubious; indecisive; unsettled, undecided, undetermined; in suspense, open to discussion; controvertible; in question &c (inquiry) 461. vague; indeterminate, indefinite; ambiguous, equivocal; undefined, undefinable; confused &c (indistinct) 447; mystic, oracular; dazed. perplexing &c v.; enigmatic, paradoxical, apocryphal, problematical, hypothetical; experimental &c 463. unpredictable, unforeseeable (unknowable) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... saw her before him, it was neither love nor hate that he felt, but an undefinable and overmastering emotion that seemed to petrify him, so that he stood there quite silent with ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... that the sweetest morsel of love's feast has been eaten, that the freshest, fairest blush of the flower has been snatched and has passed away, when the ceremony at the altar has been performed, and legal possession has been given? There is an aroma of love, an undefinable delicacy of flavour, which escapes and is gone before the church portal is left, vanishing with the maiden name, and incompatible with the solid comfort appertaining to the rank of wife. To love one's own spouse, and to be loved by her, is the ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... the chief of whom the cathedral takes its name. The windows of the triforium are large and divided into four compartments. The general disposition of the choir, with its radiating chapels, is superb; and it is exactly this satisfying, though perhaps undefinable, quality that is ofttimes lacking in an originally well-planned work which fails to inspire one. The choir contains an iron grille of the thirteenth century, of very beautiful workmanship, and is surrounded ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... dance. I readily consented, and before the party broke up I had given the stranger all my heart. I had never loved before, much as I had enjoyed men's company. Yet, although I gave my heart away, I had some undefinable dread of this dark, daring stranger, with the remorseless though beautiful eye, and that dare-devil step and bearing. Many times, again, we met; frequently in the meadows when the gloaming came; and often in my ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... extract just given from his Journal, it will be perceived that, in Byron's own opinion, a character which, like his, admitted of so many contradictory comparisons, could not be otherwise than wholly undefinable itself. It will be found, however, on reflection, that this very versatility, which renders it so difficult to fix, "ere it change," the fairy fabric of his character, is, in itself, the true clue through ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... which my narrative has made the reader acquainted. In the mean time the moon had been growing out of the clouds, clearer and clearer. The hut came in sight. But the look of it was somehow altered—with an undefinable change, such as might appear on a familiar object in a dream; and leaning against the side of the door stood a figure she could not mistake for another than her musician. Absorbed in his music, he did not see her. She called out, "Joseph! Joseph!" ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... proposes to acknowledge woman's service to the State by paying her a weekly wage according to the number of children that she bears and rears. I don't propose to repeat his objections to the idea; they could hardly be called objections. There is an ugly look comes into his eyes; something quite undefinable, prehistoric, almost dangerous, looks out of them.... In talking to him on this subject you do not seem to be talking to a man. It is as if you had come face to face with something behind civilisation, behind humanity, something ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... were possible to have all the phenomena of the past presented to us, the convenient epochs and formations of the geologist, though having a certain distinctness, would fade into one another with limits as undefinable as those of the distinct and yet separable colours ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... and Margaret watched the tall, lonely figure sweep up the hall to the lift. As the glass doors closed on it she had the sense of an imprisonment. The beautiful head disappeared first, still buried in the muff, the long trailing skirt followed. A woman of undefinable rarity was going up heaven-ward, like a specimen in a bottle. And into what a heaven—a vault as of hell, sooty black, from ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... usually turned to some grown-up person with a question which showed that her brain had been at work upon some new impression. She very early got over childish lispings, and by the time she was four years old spoke perfectly plainly. She was afraid of her father; her feeling towards her mother was undefinable, she was not afraid of her, nor was she demonstrative to her; but she was not demonstrative even towards Agafya, though she was the only person she loved. Agafya never left her. It was curious to see them together. Agafya, all in black, with a dark handkerchief on ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... Harris—shame upon her for that same!—was just then making an adventurous foray,—was a hearing of the conversation which might take place between Richard Crawford and his cousin! That conversation she had determined to hear, at all hazards; for what, she scarcely knew herself, but with an undefinable impression that she must hear it—that (Jesuitically, and of course most horrible doctrine!) the end might justify the otherwise indefensible means—and that—that—in short, that she was going to do it, and this settled the matter as well as finished ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... to be rendered into Patavinian Latin. The latter part, the "Miseries of Opium," I had most unaccountably always neglected to read. Again and again, when my increasing debility had threatened to bring my studies to an abrupt conclusion, I had meditated this experiment, but an undefinable and shadowy fear had as often stayed my hand. But now that I knew that unless I could by artificial stimuli obtain a sudden increase of strength I must STARVE, I no longer hesitated. I was desperate; I believed that something horrible would result from it; though my imagination, most vivid, ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... cruel multitude, headed by chosen assassins, are attacking the prisons, forcing the houses of the noblesse and priests, and, after a horrid mockery of judicial condemnation, execute them on the spot. The tocsin is rung, alarm guns are fired, the streets resound with fearful shrieks, and an undefinable sensation of terror seizes on one's heart. I feel that I have committed an imprudence in venturing to Paris; but the barriers are now shut, and I must abide the event. I know not to what these proscriptions tend, or if all who are ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... baptized. And I acknowledge and glorify and worship One God in Three persons, of one substance, and not to be confounded, increate and immortal, eternal, infinite, boundless, without body, without passions, immutable, unchangeable, undefinable, the fountain of goodness, righteousness and everlasting light, maker of all things visible and invisible, containing and sustaining all things, provident for all, ruler and King of all. Without him was there nothing made, nor without his providence can aught ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... wind fell, and the sound of the waterfall increased, and grew rough and loud, and the undefinable rushing noise that precedes a heavy fall of rain in the tropics, the voice of the wilderness, moaned through the high woods, until at length the clouds sank upon the valley in boiling mists, rolling halfway ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... some moments at the door, Gerard Douw at length found breath and collectedness to bid him welcome, and with a mute inclination of the head, the stranger stepped forward into the room. There was something indescribably odd, even horrible, about all his motions, something undefinable, that was unnatural, unhuman; it was as if the limbs were guided and directed by a spirit unused to the management of bodily machinery. The stranger spoke hardly at all during his visit, which did not exceed half an hour; and the host himself could scarcely muster courage enough to utter the few ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... April now, and a soft springy day. A fire burned gently in the chimney, while a window open at a little distance let in Spring's whispers and fragrances; and the plain old-fashioned room looked cosy and pretty, as some rooms will look under undefinable influences. Nothing could be plainer. There was not even the quaint elegance of Mr. Linden's room; this one was wainscotted with light blue and whitewashed, and furnished with the simplest of chintz ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... street, and one to the garden behind: both ceiling and floor were of a dark brown, for the beams and boards of the one were old and interpenetrated with smoke, and the other was of hard-beaten clay, into which also was wrought much smoke and an undefinable blackness, while the windows were occupied with different plants favoured of Grannie, so that little light could get in, and that little was half-swallowed by the general brownness. A tall eight-day ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... came to Rosville. I invited Ben Somers and Helen to spend with us the only evening he stayed. After they were gone, we sat in my room and talked over many matters. His spirits were not as buoyant as usual, and I felt an undefinable anxiety which I did not mention. When he said that mother was more abstracted than ever, he sighed. I asked him how many years he thought I must waste; eighteen had already ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... utilitarian qualities which are apt to preclude the luxury of charm. Now it had been Selden's fate to have a charming mother: her graceful portrait, all smiles and Cashmere, still emitted a faded scent of the undefinable quality. His father was the kind of man who delights in a charming woman: who quotes her, stimulates her, and keeps her perennially charming. Neither one of the couple cared for money, but their disdain of it took the form ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... Calvinistic creed were either sound or unsound. If the former, then Mr. Scott was either very obtuse or very obstinate to resist so long their power. If the latter, he acted with great weakness in yielding at length to insufficient evidence, on the score of an undefinable impulse. In either case, his name is divested of commanding authority in the view of reasonable men. Yet it can hardly be doubted, that this claim to special teaching from the fountain of wisdom and of truth, has done more, incalculably more, to awe the minds of men ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... the poet by a reference to the model, that has its natural place in the museum named from the great sculptor whose genius had flung into the clay the features of a character so unlike his own. The bust, says the Danish critic, at first sight impresses one with an undefinable classic grace; on closer examination the restlessness of a life is reflected in a brow over which clouds seem to hover, but clouds from which we look for lightnings. The dominant impression of the whole is that of some irresistible power (Unwiderstehlichkeit). Thorwaldsen, at a much later date (1829-1833) ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... I can pass any order that may come," proposed Hal, who, truth to tell, felt an undefinable something that made him too restless to like the idea ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... custom, and give it regulation and limits within which it becomes unquestionable. The limit is generally a limit of toleration. Literature, pictures, exhibitions, celebrations, and festivals are controlled by some undefined, and probably undefinable, standard of decency and propriety, which sets a limit of toleration on the appeals to fun, sensuality, and various prejudices. In regard to all social customs, the mores sanction them by defining them and giving them form. Such regulated customs are etiquette. The regulation by ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... noticed Jonathan Wild at a little distance from him, eyeing him with a look of the most savage satisfaction. The thief-taker's throat was bound up with thick folds of linen, and his face had a ghastly and cadaverous look, which communicated an undefinable and ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... beauty of the lovely sleeper. Besides the consciousness of so gentle, so helpless and so heavenly a form, sleeping in innocent security, confiding in the protection of man, and that very helplessness of her nature, awakens a sentiment of sympathy and tenderness, as undefinable as it is thrilling and transporting. And such was the sleep of Theodora: she was young and replete with charms, and, alas! but too helpless and in need of protection. Her beauteous form was displayed to the ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... smoothly enough, and the work upon the great story progressed to the author's satisfaction; but as Easter approached something queer seemed to develop in the Dampmere cottage. It was undefinable, intangible, invisible, but it was there. Dawson's hair would not stay down. When he rose up in the morning he would find every single hair on his head standing erect, and plaster it as he would with his brushes dipped in water, it could not be induced to lie down again. More inconvenient than this, ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... be precipitating itself upon the brig; there was a moment of undefinable anguish; the men forsook their poles and flocked to the stern in spite of ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... from sources so subtile and undefinable, that it cannot be forced into particular channels; and whenever the attempt has been made, ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... Moggridge, it had not before occurred to Theophil to make of him a companion; but about this time, as Mr. Moggridge would drop in of an evening to discuss church matters, the young minister would be surprised to note how lonely he felt when he had gone. Indeed Mr. Moggridge possessed that great undefinable gift of companionability. ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... him the key to certain secret recesses of human nature hitherto sealed up in darkness. Along that border-line by which the glimmerings of consciousness are, as by the thinnest, yet the most impervious veil, separated from the regions of the unexplored and the undefinable, De Quincey walked familiarly and with privileged eye and ear. Many a nebulous mass of hieroglyphically inscribed meanings did he—this Champollion, defying all human enigmas, this Herschel, or Lord Rosse, forever peering into the obscure chasms and yawning abysses of human ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... The sense of her undefinable position kept her from much repose on the second night also; but the following morning brought an unexpected letter from Swithin, written about the same hour as hers to him, and it ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... knew better. I had caught a look now and again—an undefinable glance, which told me the whole pitiable tale. She did not love Rochez; and in the drama which we were preparing to enact the curtain would fall on his ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... out to the summerhouse. First she opened the book of her father's. It was a translation of a Russian book, very deep and moving and sad and incomprehensible. A perfectly fascinating book! It always filled her with vague, undefinable emotions. She read: "O youth, youth! Thou carest for nothing: thou possessest, as it were, all the treasures of the universe; even sorrow comforts thee, even melancholy becomes thee; thou art self-confident and audacious; thou sayest: 'I alone live—behold!' But the days speed on and ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... and the man stepped forward, his eyes on her, his hands twitching with a desire to clasp her to him, yet restrained by some undefinable power. "While I believed your brother story, I could have played the good Samaritan most beautifully, but after I talked with Willoughby I prefer him at ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... abstraction, every rule of conduct, every constitution, every law and social arrangement, is an instrument that has no value in itself. Whatever credit it receives, whatever reverence we give it, is derived from its utility in ministering to those concrete experiences which are as obvious and as undefinable as color or sound. We can celebrate the positively good things, we can live them, we can create them, but we cannot philosophize about them. To the anaesthetic intellect we could not convey the meaning of joy. A creature that could reason but not feel ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... exhausted soldiers slept, even while the guns of the enemy roared in front of them, and during the brief halts which the confusion in the road caused, there was no real repose. The excitement of the battle and the retreat, and the undefinable sense of insecurity which their situation engendered, banished rest. Tired Nature asserted her claims, and the men yielded to them only when endurance had ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... of the series stand in an unbroken relation of cause and effect so that the series cannot be interrupted[399].—The latter alternative is likewise inadmissible, for it is impossible to maintain that any momentary existence should undergo complete annihilation entirely undefinable and disconnected (with the previous state of existence), since we observe that a thing is recognised in the various states through which it may pass and thus has a connected existence[400]. And in those cases also where a thing is not clearly ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... a long drowsy time of stillness and shadow. I seemed to have fallen in some deep well of delicious oblivion and obscurity. Dream-like images still flitted before my fancy—these were at first undefinable, but after awhile they took more certain shapes. Strange fluttering creatures hovered about me—lonely eyes stared at me from a visible deep gloom; long white bony fingers grasping at nothing made signs to me of warning or menace. Then—very gradually, ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... to hope for? For unspeakable benefits; that is, benefits for which language contains no expression. So that, after all, we know not what it is we are to hope for. And how can we feel a hope or even a wish for any object that is undefinable? How can priests incessantly speak to us of things of which they, at the same time, acknowledge it is impossible for us to form ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... the events of the past few hours—events which had awakened within him susceptibilities he had not known he possessed, which had struck a new chord in his being whose vibrations thrilled him with strange, undefinable pain. As he recalled Whitcomb's affectionate familiarity, he seemed to hear again the low, musical cadences of the boyish tones, to see the sunny radiance of his smile, to feel the irresistible magnetism of his presence, and it seemed as though ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... editing. Some sermons, a little volume of Thoughts on Private Devotion, and another on the Epistle to the Romans, are nearly all that he has left of his own. Novelty of manner or thought in them there is none, still less anything brilliant or sharp in observation or style; but there is an undefinable sense, in their calm, severe pages, of a deep and serious mind dwelling on deep and very serious things. It is impossible not to wish that a man who could so write and impress people might have had the leisure to ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... I reckoned I'd seen enough of the kitchen arrangements; so I left them scraping the General—that is, getting off the injured outside, in order to see what really he was made of, and what he had beneath the undefinable cover. When in Washington, there's nothing like going ahead; and if you can look a man into respect for you, so much the better. Dignitary or no dignitary won't do; you must always profess to be ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... three old-fashioned French men-of-war with high castles, like pagodas, on the bow and stern, such as you see in Froissart; and snug little turrets on top of the mast, full of little men, with something undefinable in their hands. All three were sailing through a bright-blue sea, blue as Sicily skies; and they were leaning over on their sides at a fearful angle; and they must have been going very fast, for the white spray was about the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... (grahya), and by the fact of the rise of such a percept, at another moment it appears as a thing realizable or attainable in the external world. The special features of the object undefinable in themselves as being what they are in themselves (svalak@sa@na) are what is actually perceived (pratyak@savi@saya) [Footnote ref 1]. The prama@naphala (result of ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... very unhappy, from a variety of causes, definable and undefinable. My chambermaid had been cross for a week, and, by talking to my cook, had made her dissatisfied with her place. The mother of five little children, I felt that I had a weight of care and responsibility greater than I could support. I was unequal to the task. My spirits fell ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... the relative position of the Spaniards in the southwest, and their disposition to exclude the Americans from the navigation of the southern Mississippi to its mouth. An attempt to open that navigation by treaty had failed; and there was an almost undefinable boundary-line between the Spanish possessions and those of the United States, about which a dispute had arisen that ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... South Audley Street nursing home and was at once surrounded with the hush, the shaded rooms, the scents of medicine and flowers, and some undefinable cleanliness that ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... But this time he was not acting a part. In spite, or rather by reason of, the full explanation that had been given him, he found something suspicious and mysterious in the whole affair. A thousand vague and undefinable suspicions crossed his mind. Was he in presence of a crime? Certainly, evidently not. But what was the cause then of the mystery and reticence he detected? Was he upon the track of some lamentable family ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... was thus balked of my expected amusement. I succeeded, however, in learning indirectly something about the old witch. She enjoyed among her neighbours that solid, durable kind of respect which is founded on vague, undefinable fear, and was believed to have effected many remarkable cures. In the treatment of syphilitic diseases, which are fearfully common among the Russian peasantry, she was supposed to be specially successful, and I have no doubt, from the vague descriptions which I received, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... being seemed exalted to the clouds, yet restrained by some galling chain from the heaven it sought to enter. And then I asked myself, What is the secret of this mysterious power of music; where shall we look for the cause of those undefinable yet overwhelming emotions which it never fails to excite? A hopeless question it seemed, one which the philosophers of all ages have failed to solve, perhaps because they have not troubled themselves to inquire very seriously about it; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of the Eiger, which seemed astonished by the echoes of our steps. We often made use of the ladder. By the third time I had recovered my liberty of action, and no longer descended backward, but contemplating with an undefinable charm the gaping gulfs which vanished in the obscure recesses of the glacier, bluer than the skies ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... event came its little heralds sweeping across the face of night. First came a little motion of cold air—it was dead-still before; then an undefinable freshness; then a very slight but rather grateful smell from the soil of the conscious earth. Next twittered from the bush ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... it may indicate a want, and even develop an unconscious appetency, but it can not, itself, reveal an object, any more than the feeling of hunger can reveal the actual presence, or determine the character and fitness, of any food. An undefinable fear, a mysterious presentiment, an instinctive yearning, a hunger of the soul, these are all irrational emotions which can never rise to the dignity of knowledge. An object must be conjured by the imagination, or conceived by the understanding, or intuitively apprehended ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... is not enough to arouse my enthusiasm. It is possible that no master ever painted a buttercup like this one, or the fringe of a robe like that one; that this poet has a unique subtlety, and that an undefinable music. I am still unconvinced, tho the man who can not see it, we are told, should at once retire to the place where there is wailing and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... especially the extent and number, of the Alpine peaks impressed me with a vague, undefinable sense, which was not, I think, the anticipated sensation; and indeed if I had been in a poetic mood, it would have been quickly dissipated by the mock raptures of a young Englishman with a poodly moustache and an eye-glass. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... did not feel much like eating. He had a sudden and undefinable suspicion of that ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... An undefinable instinct led the man's footsteps to that lonely height. He skirted the temple and anon stood looking down on the panorama of Rome stretched out at his feet: the Palatine sloping downwards in a gentle gradient—covered with the dwellings of the rich patricians which formed ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... with the literary style of that early composition,—you will see extravagance and bombast, where once you saw only eloquence and graphic power. And as for the graver and more important matter of the thought of the discourse, I think you will be aware of a certain undefinable shallowness and crudity. Your growing experience has borne you beyond it. Somehow you feel it does not come home to you, and suit you as you would wish it should. It will not do. That old sermon you ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... the regime is the result of these premises. The Fascist also loves his neighbour, but "neighbour" is not for him a vague and undefinable word: love for his neighbour does not prevent necessary educational severities. Fascism rejects professions of universal affection and, though living in the community of civilised peoples, it watches them and looks at them diffidently. It follows them in their state of mind ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... girl passed her. The whiff of unwashed garments, stale cooking, and undefinable tenement odor that reached her nostrils sickened her. Was it possible that she must let this creature have a hold even momentarily upon her last few hours? Yet she knew she must. She knew she would not rest until she had been reassured by Carter's voice and the explanation ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... formation of the other, is hardly less wonderful than either. Still the great mystery remains unriddled; our researches have brought us no nearer the beginning, and the first cause of all continues unapproachable and undefinable as ever. Instead of explaining physical creation, we begin with it; we take the existence of matter for granted, and its attributes for granted, and forthwith begin to fabricate a universe, without first ascertaining whence was matter, ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... last: "Is this all?"—No, says your guide; "see here!" and flings one last door open. And that, like the door in Lord Dunsaney's play, opens on to the vastness of the stars. What is it that baffles us and remains undefined and undefinable? Just this: TAO: the Infinite Nature. You can survey the earth, and measure it with chains; but not Space, in which a billion leagues is nowise different from an inch or two, —it bears the same proportion ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... of unbounded power, for undefined and undefinable purposes, the evil of a moral and almost physical inaptitude of the man to the function must be the greatest we can conceive to happen in the management ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... thirst, and went to a little run of water but a short distance from them, in order to satisfy it. The interruption of Jarvis was particularly unseasonable. Jane was relating, in a manner peculiar to herself, in which was mingled that undefinable exchange of looks lovers are so fond of, some incident of her early life to the colonel that greatly interested him. Knowing the captain's foibles, he pointed, therefore, with his finger, as ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... stood there on the landing Guest hesitated for a moment or two, an undefinable feeling of dread having attacked him; there was a curious ringing in the ears, and his heart ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... the Crown have been greatly diminished, and have been transferred in effect to the Houses of Parliament, or rather to the House of Commons, and the Ministers taken from the Houses are in fact, though not in name, servants of Parliament. This arrangement leaves an undefined and undefinable amount of authority to the Crown. It is not an arrangement which any man would have planned beforehand; but it is kept up, not because it is an anomaly, but because it has, as a matter of experience, turned ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... abject expressed in his staring eyes and parted lips. On the other hand, the simple dignity of Sir Philip Derval's bearing, and the mild power of his countenance, were alike inconceivably heightened. A change had come over the whole man, the more impressive because wholly undefinable. ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... seems to be conscience hardly aware of itself as such. It is "the sense of some unexplored evil ever dogging his footsteps," which reached its keenest poignancy in a constitutional horror of serpents, but which is a very subtle and undefinable thing, observable rather as an undertone to his consciousness of life than as anything tangible enough to be defined or accounted for by particular causes. On the journey to Rome, the vague misgivings took shape in one definite experience. ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman |
