"Indescribably" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... accessories is nothing; if only I could give an idea of the air of immense importance that Contenson contrived to impart to them! There was something indescribably knowing in the collar of his coat, and the fresh blacking on a pair of boots with gaping soles, to which no language can do justice. However, to give some notion of this medley of effect, it may be added that ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... our eyes was indescribably horrible. In the centre of a dense circle of negroes, who had wrought themselves up to a pitch of ferocity that caused them to look more like wild beasts than men, stood the king, and beside him the doctor or fetishman. ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... wide and stormy Black Sea had to be crossed to reach them; the stores of food, clothing, and medicine that might have saved many a life were at Varna, or lost in the Black Prince; the state of the great Barrack Hospital at Scutari was indescribably horrible; everybody was frantic to rush to the relief; no one knew what best to do; public feeling was at fever-heat. How could it be otherwise when William Howard Russell, the Times correspondent, was constantly writing such true but heartrending ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... who smiled so indescribably and asked so many questions about seafaring in the way of civil conversation, would probably have shown small interest in the adventures of a seaman in search of a lodging ashore. She would have smiled, ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... new sublime—an original sublime—quite as sublime as the Greek sublime. See yonder, in the midst of his angels, the Judge of the world descending in glory; and near him, beautiful and gentle, and yet indescribably august and pure, the Virgin by his side. There is the "Moses," the grandest figure that ever was carved in stone. It has about it something frightfully majestic, if one may so speak. In examining this, and the astonishing ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of Apollo—what magnificent forms the fellows had, and what indescribably hideous faces! They were tall, muscular, broad-shouldered, small waisted and ankled, round-muscled, black-polished—in a word, elegantly powerful. Many of them might have stood as models for Hercules. Like superfine cloth, they were of ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... Hunter gives the following view of the Indian mythology, while describing his own and his companions' first sight of the Pacific Ocean: "Here the surprise and astonishment of our whole party was indescribably great. The unbounded view of waters, the incessant and tremendous dashing of the waves along the shore, accompanied with a noise resembling the roar of loud and distant thunder, filled our minds with ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... quickness of perception, the ability to guard one's self, are indications of character which are particularly in place in the countenance of a young lady in society, but when, without losing these, the face takes on the radiance born of love and trust, the effect is indescribably charming—especially to the eyes of the man who causes the change. Longer, more out-of-the-way roads between Hillcrest and the Falls I venture to say were never known than I drove over that afternoon, and my happy companion, ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... descended through office after office, it neither sought out people nor avoided them. Walls, doors, windows, ceilings, floors and rugs, office furniture and office personnel; all alike were absorbed into and made a part of that indescribably ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... mind something indescribably peaceful and even sad about that view, a mute sympathy with the Past that I could hardly account for, seeing that I was Colonial born and bred. For the first time since my arrival in England the real beauty of the place came home ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... realisation of the fact that this before me, this presence, was no living human being, no dweller in our familiar world, not a woman, but a ghost! Oh, it was an awful moment! I pray that I may never again endure another like it. There is something so indescribably frightful in the feeling that we are on the verge of being tried beyond what we can bear, that ordinary conditions are slipping away from under us, that in another moment reason or life itself ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... finished a career which is one of the miracles of history. His work is a complete epitome of religious art, including all the great themes, and enveloping each with an atmosphere of pure spirituality, indescribably ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... able to discern the slightest resemblance either in manner or feature, or in those indescribably slight personal peculiarities that constitute a family likeness, between Nizza and her reputed father—neither could he now recall any particular resemblance between her and Thirlby; still he could ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... system. The extreme opposite of the congregate system. The prisoners are allowed to have practically no communication with anyone whomsoever. In some countries this system is made indescribably cruel. At Santiago in Chili in one part of the prison the inmates are employed upon useful work under most humane conditions, and yet in another part of the very same building a most barbarous system exists. Mr F. B. Ward (quoted in Penological and Preventive Principles) ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... Washington and its pedestal move slightly; gradually they change and shape themselves into the figure of a well-dressed man, rather short and stocky, with a sociable, commonplace face. His head, however, is very peculiarly modelled; it reminds one, indescribably and faintly, of the fact that men sprang from beasts. The high position of the ears help this impression, as does also the astonishing animal brilliance of the eyes. Faust, passing his hand ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... angrily and, for Rhoda, there was that indescribably sweet and exciting reaction she always got from his nakedness. Like a Greek god standing there, she thought, and it thrilled her even though she knew she was being ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... flowers in the capital was over, yet, on the mountain, the cherry-trees were still in blossom. They advanced on their way further and further. The haze clung to the surface like a soft sash does round the waist, and to Genji, who had scarcely ever been out of the capital, the scenery was indescribably novel. The ascetic lived in a deep cave in the rocks, near the lofty summit. Genji did not, however, declare who he was, and the style of his retinue was of a very private character. Yet his nobility of manners ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... but the strangers determined to make the best of it. The manner of this band of Indians was somewhat different from that of the others. They brought nothing for barter, and had an indescribably coarse and hardy style ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... were absent three days and returned to camp without encountering or seeing any signs of Indians. After resting our horses one day we again struck out, this time going farther north in the direction of Murderers Creek. The country was indescribably rough, and our first night's camp was at the John Day at a point on the trail made by Gen. Howard when he was herding the Indians north. About 10 o'clock one of the men from a picket came in and told me that the Indians were signaling from two sides of the camp. I walked down to where ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... have seldom if ever heard melody more enchanting. All languages seemed to be the same to her. She sang in French and Italian, German and English,—in tongues with which I was unfamiliar. It was in these Eastern harmonies that she was most successful. They were indescribably weird and thrilling, and she delivered them with a verve and sweetness which was amazing. I sat at one of the little tables with which the room ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... which hoarse cries from many voices, a heavy thud and rumble on wood, and a crash of timbers and a gurgle and a splash were indescribably mingled; the gun under which Abel Keeling had lain had snapped her rotten breechings and plunged down the deck, carrying Bligh's unconscious form with it. The deck came up vertical, and for one instant longer Abel ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... convivial occasion, who had jumped carefully over the shadows of the lamp-posts, but on coming to the shadow of the church-tower, ruefully took off his boots and stockings, and turned his trousers up, saying, "I'll ha'e to wade." The reason why the stories of drunken persons are often so indescribably humorous, though, no doubt, highly deplorable in a Christian country, is that the victim loses all sense of probability and proportion, and laments unduly over an altogether imaginary difficulty. The ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... his faults there is something indescribably attractive about the personality of Shelley. His eager generosity, his loyalty, his tenderness are irresistible. One feels that he would have always responded to a frank and simple appeal. A foil for his virtues ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... trees on the canal sides has the same curious charm as at Amsterdam, although there the blackness is richer and more absolute. Even the Hoorn warehouses are things of beauty: one in particular, by the Harbour Tower, with bright green shutters, is indescribably gay, almost coquettish. Hoorn also has the most satisfying little houses I saw in Holland—streets of them. And of all the costumes of Holland I remember most vividly the dead black dress and lace cap of a woman who suddenly ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... complete this radiant spring picture, the very earth of the vineyards below the fresh green of the vine sprouts shone with the rich red brown of the Wirtemberg soil, which is one more opulent charm added to the beauty of an indescribably lovely spring country. Rottenburg lies in the centre of this valley; the Neckar flows placidly half way round the small town. The diligence rolled over a mediaeval bridge which spans the river, and Wilhelmine found herself at the end of ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... have thought the Monitor a living thing. No man was visible. You saw her moving around that circle, delivering her fire invariably at the point of contact, and heard the crash of the missile against her enemy's armor above the thunder of her guns, on the bank where we stood. It was indescribably grand! ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.
... bald," grated the old man with a death's-head grin, indescribably ferocious, "but it's got brains enough in it to 'skunk' any man in this crowd three ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... associations of the place lent to such occasions a special interest and solemnity. Surrounded by the ruins of man's glory, we felt deeply how unchanging was the word of God. In a city of gorgeous ceremonials that had changed Christianity into a kind of baptized paganism, we felt it indescribably refreshing to partake, in the beautiful simplicity of our own worship, of the symbols of the broken body and shed blood of our Lord. We seemed to be compassed about with a great cloud of witnesses, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... indescribably beautiful!" exclaimed the old Oak Tree, rejoicingly. "I have them all around me, great and small; not one has been forgotten! How can so much happiness be imagined? How ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... possibility had occurred to me then, I would have taken any risk rather than make my escape by that way.... Oh well!' he went on more coolly, 'I suppose that to any one who didn't know her, the idea of her being privy to her husband's murder might not seem so indescribably fatuous. Forgive the expression.' He looked attentively at the burning end of his cigarette, studiously unconscious of the red flag that flew in Trent's eyes for an instant at his words and the ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... any source whatever. "He had married," he said, "for love, and for love only; and his bride was far more than worthy of his love." When I thought of these expressions on the part of my friend, I confess that I felt indescribably puzzled. Could it be possible that he was taking leave of his senses? What else could I think? He, so refined, so intellectual, so fastidious, with so exquisite a perception of the faulty, and so keen an appreciation of the beautiful! ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... packing-cases, and rubbish of all kinds, were strewn about, and absolutely hid the soil from view. Away on the hill beyond I spied the tiny house and hospital where I had spent six weary nights and days; and between these two buildings a patch of bare ground nearly half a mile square, indescribably filthy, had been the site of the white-hooded waggons and ragged tents of the laager itself. The road was of no interest, merely rolling veldt with a very few scattered farmhouses, apparently deserted; but one noticed that rough attempts had been ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... superfluity of heat. The verdure, both of trees and grass, is now in its prime, the leaves elastic, all life. The grass-fields are plenteously bestrewn with white-weed, large spaces looking as white as a sheet of snow, at a distance, yet with an indescribably warmer tinge than snow,—living white, intermixed with living green. The hills and hollows beyond the Cold Spring copiously shaded, principally with oaks of good growth, and some walnut-trees, with the rich sun brightening in the ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... new summer ribbon for three years, and now, in addition, she had purchased some rosebuds, and arranged them in little clusters in a frilling of lace inside the brim. Her pretty face looked out of this little millinery halo with an indescribably mild and innocent radiance. One caught one's self looking past her fixed shining eyes for the brightness ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... hour. The length of the descent was only about 500 yards, and in the daylight and when it was dry fatigue parties and even camels used to get down in about ten minutes, but now, what with the rain and the passage of the unit in front of us, it had become indescribably slippery. Men were falling down every few yards, and the mules were not much better. It took two hours for the Battalion to cover ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... of eyes remained to haunt and torment Gale. It was indescribably sweet, and provocative of thoughts that he believed were wild without warrant. Something within him danced for very joy, and the next instant he was conscious of wistful doubt, a gravity that he could not understand. It dawned upon him that ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... against strings of weird votive-offerings, dried and shrivelled, that hung from the roof-beams. On either side were rude gods, some grotesquely carved, others no more than shapeless logs swathed in rotten and indescribably filthy matting. The air was mouldy and heavy with decay, while strings of fish-tails and of half-cleaned dog and crocodile skulls did not add to the wholesomeness ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... 'Hush!' at that was a flash of genius. It was indescribably eloquent. She forbade and invited in the same breath. It was wonderful, and it made me Buckingham. And Buckingham it brought to her feet. Little wonder. It would have brought a cardinal. In the passionate rhetoric of my ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... when I was in bondage. You see," she said, "dey used to weave what dey called nigger-cloth, an' each one of us got jes' sech a strip, an' had to wear it width-wise. Them that was short got along pretty well, but as for me"—She gave an indescribably droll glance at her long limbs and then at us, and added,—"Tell YOU, I had enough of Bloomers ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... characters, Fanny was indefatigable—the piece of silver firmly clasped in the hand for collection, the courtesy when addressed by elders, the convention that nature, birds, were sentimentally beneficent. When Gregory brought out these convictions, lessons, in his indescribably fresh eager tones, Lee listened ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... come. With regard to the letter, I don't see it as you do, sir. But, sir, if you are going to talk in this tone, I would advise you to be careful. We have heard, sir"—and here Mr. Snale began to simper and grin with an indescribably loathsome grimace—"that some of your acquaintances in your native town are of opinion that you have not behaved quite so well as you should have done to a certain young lady of your acquaintance; ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... of Beauty and of Poesy. Nor is it solely because it appeals to the poetic feelings in us that this country endears itself to my heart. It is the perfect republic: the sense of emancipation experienced in it by the wanderer from the Old World is indescribably sweet and novel. Even in our ultra-civilised condition at home we do periodically escape back to nature; and, breathing the fresh mountain air and gazing over vast expanses of ocean and land, we find ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... pale. Even to her the word 'Christian' sounded like a bombshell in that room. The great traveller looked up astounded. He saw a tall woman in white with a beautiful head, a delicate face, a something indescribably noble and unusual in her whole look and attitude. She looked like a Quaker prophetess—like Dinah Morris in society—like—but his comparisons failed him. How did such a being come there? He was amazed; but he was ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... life attended its amassing, stood out with a luminous distinctness. It arrogated to itself all that was superior, and it exacted, and was invested with, a lordly deference. It lived in the finest mansions and laved in luxuries. Surrounded with an indescribably pretentious air of importance, it radiated tone, ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... party on the platform went back through the yellow haze of the hot afternoon, to the quiet old house. Ah! how indescribably quiet and lonely now! Some one might have lain dead in those echoing rooms, ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... favorite, Caesar Borgia." The nuptials celebrated for the Pope's daughter Lucretia—who, by the way, was a divorcee—were "by no means peculiarly decorous." The Latin chronicler who has related them reports in this connection that the moral state of the clergy at Rome was indescribably low. The example of the Popes had set the pace for the rest. From the highest to the lowest each priest had his concubine as a substitute for married life ("concubinas in figura matrimonii"), and that, quite openly. The good ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... hame, come hame!" answered the colonel, with both accent and quantity heaped on the word hame. What the wow could be, she had no idea; only, as the years passed on, the strange word became in her mind indescribably associated with the strange shape in yellow cloth on his sleeves. Had she been a native of the town, she could not have failed to know its import, so familiar was every one with it, although it did not ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... gentlemen, I have since—and alas, too late!— had reason to believe that, strange as such a circumstance may appear to you, she did not altogether escape a reciprocal passion. But my studious habits had brought with them one serious disadvantage—I was indescribably diffident and shy; so much so that when the time arrived that I must either unbosom myself or let her pass away out of my life, perhaps for ever, I found myself without the courage to make the necessary declaration. We parted without a word of love having passed between us. She remained single ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the world lasts: the value of the finished article may generally be taken as some measure of the labour and care necessary to produce it: and the value of a pure, simple-hearted, well-taught Christian child is so immeasurably and indescribably great, that we may safely conclude that the workmen and workwomen employed in producing the result must have spent upon their work an incredible amount of honest self-denying toil: a perfunctory discharge of the office of schoolmaster,—so many ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... left him. Going home, he bathed and changed into his customary garb of smooth black, to which his rotund placidity of bearing imparted an indescribably silky finish. His discarded clothes he put, with his own hands, into an old grip, sprinkled them plenteously with a powerful disinfectant, and left orders that they be destroyed. It was a phase of Dr. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... indescribably touching in that curling-iron and those two mugs. I could see the table on which the mugs would soon proudly stand, and "father" and "mother" and children thereat, and I could see the hand heating the curling-iron and applying ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... marble facade he took out his watch, a pale gold efflorescence in the gloom, and rang the hour in minute, clear notes. The third quarter past ten. He recalled the ball, but then commencing, at Stephen Jannan's; there it would be indescribably gay, a house flooded with the music of quadrilles, light, polite-chatter; and he determined to proceed and ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... said yet about hail or lightning storms. Some of the latter were indescribably grand, when at night the whole firmament would be absolutely ablaze with flashes, sheets and waves so continuous as to be without interval. Once when lying on my bed on the open prairie such a storm came on. It opened with loud thunder and some brilliant ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... themselves. He cannot spare the time from his work, and how can he afford to humble himself and go a-masquerading! I was ready to give my life once and for all, but I could not degrade it in detail. Besides, there is something indescribably paltry in a stockbroker's tactics, who runs on errands for some insipid affected woman; all this disgusts an artist. Love in the abstract is not enough for a great man in poverty; he has need of its utmost devotion. The frivolous creatures ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... shocking the wood-nymphs from their propriety, sally forth to court the Goddess of Health. They congregate in a dark cellar-like chamber, round an ample and steaming pool, and then sink into it, to forget for a while all their pains and maladies, and to enjoy that indescribably delightful sensation of having the joints gently unscrewed and fresh oiled. Others, whose shoulders and backs have known the pangs of lumbago and acute rheumatism, are put under one of the douches; and down ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... in the familiar streets, narrow, sunken, and indescribably dirty, as they now appeared to me. For I had been accustomed to the wider, airier spaces, and to the bickering rivulets which ran down most of the steeper streets of Plassenburg, and which made it one of the cleanest towns in the world. So that the ancient and unreformed filth ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... I am pretty. You should have said indescribably pretty!" And, laughing gaily, Lida sank into a chair, glancing again at Sanine. Raising her arms and thus emphasizing the curves of her shapely bosom, she proceeded to remove her hat, but, in so doing, let ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... was visible, and its hue was that of the palest blue china, while the pupil was so extremely small as to be scarcely noticeable. The apparent absence of that shining black aperture in the centre, made the eyes look like glass marbles, and rendered their glance indescribably stony. Greif almost started when he saw them. 'You preferred Schwarzburg to Heidelberg, then,' he remarked, by way ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... him one of those shy, timid glances he had noticed before, and began coiling something around her fingers, with a suggestion of coy embarrassment, indescribably inconsistent with ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... was indescribably flattering, and all the more so that it followed so quickly on her slight reproof. The tone in which she spoke had become low and timid, and I observed that she turned her head quickly towards a second door of the room; I fancied that ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of the valley, and beyond, far below us, looms the town of Sorata. From this distance the red tile roofs, the soft blue, green, and yellow of its stuccoed walls, look indescribably fresh and grateful. A closer inspection will probably dissipate this impression; it will be squalid and dirty, the river-stone paving of its street will be deep in the accumulation of filth, dirty Indian children ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... of men, who, as I supposed, constantly treated me with neglect; but, as I grew older and reflected on everything, putting aside coquetry and observing things without taking any part in them myself, I perceived this much—that if men are not always polite, women are always indescribably rude. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... alone by the table for another hour or so, smiling to himself richly. There was nothing vindictive in his nature; but, if revenge came in his way, it might as well be good, and the thought of Archie's pillow reflections that night was indescribably sweet to him. He felt a pleasant sense of power. He looked down on Archie as on a very little boy whose strings he pulled—as on a horse whom he had backed and bridled by sheer power of intelligence, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he was most kindly received by Mr. Edmund Gabriel, the British Commissioner for the suppression of the slave-trade there, and everything was done by him for his comfort. The sensation of lying on an English bed, after six months lying on the ground, was indescribably delightful. Mr. Gabriel was equally attentive to him during a long and distressing attack of fever and dysentery that prostrated him soon after his arrival at Loanda. In his Journal the warmest benedictions are poured on Mr. Gabriel, and blessings everlasting ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... strange bird-creature hovering a few yards from his face in the darkness was indescribably unpleasant to Woodhouse. As his thought returned he concluded that it must be some night-bird or large bat. At any risk he would see what it was, and pulling a match from his pocket, he tried to strike it on the telescope seat. There was a smoking ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... safe from intrusion. The negro could not testify in his own behalf. It was practically impossible to counteract the oath or affidavit of the pretended master, and a premium was practically put upon perjury. The pursuit of slaves became a regular business, and its operation was often indescribably horrible. These cruelties were emphasized chiefly in the presence of those who were known to be averse to slavery in any form, and they could not ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... thought of peace until after another campaign. I shall not go to England, but expect I shall remain abroad for three or four years, which individually I would sooner spend in war than peace. There is something indescribably ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... after tomorrow I quit my rooms in the Via Felice and move to Monte Mario (an hour's distance from the city). Father Theimer is kind enough to allow me to occupy his apartments in the almost uninhabited house of the Oratorian. The view is indescribably grand. I mean now, at last, to try and lead a natural kind of life. I hope I may succeed in approaching more closely to my monastico-artistic ideal...Meanwhile you may laugh at me about it. In my next letter I will tell you ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... till the sound of the clock striking twelve made him start,—it was the only sound he had heard for some hours, and the sounds produced by inanimate things, while all living beings around are as dead, have at such an hour an effect indescribably awful. John looked at his manuscript with some reluctance, opened it, paused over the first lines, and as the wind sighed round the desolate apartment, and the rain pattered with a mournful sound against ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... suddenly to a hurricane. The dark hurry and tumult, the stress and vehemence of the battle rushed in and overwhelmed them. They were no longer persons but mere spectators, mere impressions of a tremendous convulsion. They became unreal even to themselves, miniatures of personality, indescribably small, and the two antagonistic realities, the only realities in being were first the city, that throbbed and roared yonder in a belated frenzy of defence and secondly the aeroplanes hurling inexorably towards them over the round shoulder of ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... change into a latticelike tower of flame, saw its upper part begin slowly to crumble and disintegrate. The force with which the gas issued blew the blaze high and held it dancing, tumbling in mid-air, a phenomenon indescribably weird and impressive. The men who stood nearest bent their heads and shielded their ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... another sound—a low, sullen growl—indefinable, ominous, terrible. The Texan, too, heard the sound and, jerking his horse to a standstill, sat listening. The sullen growl deepened into a loud rumble, indescribably horrible. Alice saw that the Texan's face was drawn into a tense, puzzled frown. A sudden fear gripped her heart. She leaned forward and the words ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... find that the strange sensation would rapidly pass off, and allow a further progress, which would be again arrested if the pain was renewed. In this way he would eventually find that the pleasure would become indescribably delicious, as he had seen how both Charlie and himself had enjoyed it. Poor Dale assured the doctor he might proceed at once, and he would be perfectly docile. So the doctor first asking me to suck his ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... and indescribably sombre background stood the smouldering ship with the breeze already shivering in her sails, and the smoke from her main-hatch blowing and beckoning as if to the ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... is," he answered, looking around at it and then in an indescribably comical manner down at his clothes. His gesture, his expression implied that her mistake ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... lank, with a pair of curious, unforgettable eyes looking out from a swarthy face that told of Indian blood. They were round rather than the oblong shape to be expected in his type, and the iris a muddy blue-gray. The effect was indescribably queer, and was accentuated by the coal-black lashes and straight black brows which met above a rather thick nose. He had a low forehead, and when he grinned his teeth gleamed like ivory in his dark face. He boasted of Apache-Mexican blood ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... And I am alone. If I do not take a wife or hang myself, say that life is right dear to me, or something, if you like, which does me more honour."[132] So in May he describes himself as alone and daily becoming more so; in October as "entirely alone," and as indescribably rejoiced at the return of Merck towards the ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... of complete gesture. The sheer kingliness of poverty. He creased the indescribably soft couverture for me and I sat and looked into his forehead bounded by the cube of square sliced hair. Blacker than Africa. ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... him with no questions. Harriet's fundamental quality is homeliness, comfortableness. Her tea-kettle seems always singing; an indefinable tabbiness, as of feather cushions, lurks in her dining-room, a right warmth of table and chairs, indescribably comfortable at the end of a chilly day. A busy good-smelling steam arises from all her dishes at once, and the light in the middle of the table is of a redness that enthralls the human soul. As ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... of the Serbs on the Albanians in the annexed lands brought more misery. "October 21st.—Thousands of refugees arriving from Djakovo and neighbourhood. Victims of Montenegro." My position was indescribably painful, for I had no funds left, and women came to me crying: "If you will not feed my child, throw it in the river. I cannot ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... the stairs laboriously, with Frau Nirlanger's light figure flitting just ahead of him. At the bend in the stairway she turned and looked down on us a moment, her eyes very bright and big. She pressed her fingers to her lips and wafted a little kiss toward us with a gesture indescribably graceful and pathetic. She viewed her husband's laborious progress, not daring to offer help. Then the turn in the stair ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... king who had a daughter whose name was Stella. She was indescribably beautiful, but was so whimsical and hard to please that she drove her father to despair. There had been princes and kings who had sought her in marriage, but she had found defects in them all and would have none of them. She kept advancing in years, and her father began to despair of knowing ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... forests of the world. Here indeed is the tree-lover's paradise; the woods, dry and wholesome, letting in the light in shimmering masses of half sunshine, half shade; the night air as well as the day air indescribably spicy and exhilarating; plushy fir-boughs for campers' beds and cascades to sing us to sleep. On the highest ridges, over which these old Yosemite ways passed, the silver fir (Abies magnifica) forms the bulk of ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... she stirred slightly, and turned. Drawing herself to her full height, she extended her hands over her head palm outward, and, with an indescribably graceful gesture, half mockingly bowed a ceremonious adieu to the solemn trees. Then with a little laugh she moved away in the direction ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... charms of her singing; indeed, these lower tones were peculiarly suited for the utterance of vehement passion, producing an extraordinary effect by the splendid and unexpected contrast which they enabled her to give to the sweetness of the upper tones, causing a kind of musical discordance indescribably pathetic and melancholy. Her accents were so plaintive, so penetrating, so profoundly tragical, that no ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... groom, and trying to keep the crown from pulling her hair down; and lastly, the supernumerary stepping on the bride's dress and holding the gilt emblem of royalty in its place. The whole performance was so indescribably ludicrous that I could not possibly keep my countenance in that sober frame which befitted the solemnity of the occasion, and nearly scandalised the whole assembly by laughing out loud. Three times they marched in this way around the altar, and the ceremony was then ended. The bride and groom kissed ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... the better half of the night; yet so indescribably powerful was the apprehension of derangement, that my hypocritical tongue wagged aloud at the prayers, during these furtive naps. Nay, I not only slept but dreamed. I experienced also that singular state of being, in which, while the senses are accessible ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... fascinating walls and boundaries for a series of romantic dwelling-places, shops, caves, and suchlike resorts, among which a small boy could wander at will, when lucky enough to be allowed to visit this warm apartment at all. The whole place was pervaded by an odour indescribably pleasing to my infantile nostrils, and compact of suggestions of heat acting upon clean print gowns, tea-cakes done to a turn, scrubbed ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... a man is in difficulties that he is more disposed to look upon with abhorrence than a rightabout retrograde movement—a systematic going over of the already trodden ground: and especially if he has a love of adventure, such a course appears indescribably repulsive, so long as there remains the least hope to be derived from ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... reason to the contrary, for it transacted a very considerable business in sawed and split wood which it sold at current prices after paying each of its unfortunate employees twenty-two cents and an indescribably bad dinner for eight hours' hard work in the wood yard. Mr. Murch was also interested in a chain of blue-front restaurants, and a line of South American freighters, and last but not least, he was the heaviest stockholder ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... gone out, and had walked hurriedly along quiet by-streets to the ROSENTAL. But before she had advanced a hundred yards, her courage began to fail, and the further she went, the more her spirits sank. Her surroundings were indescribably depressing: the smirched, steadily retreating snow was leaving bare all the drab brownness it had concealed—all the dismal little gardens, and dirty corners. Houses, streets and people wore their most bedraggled ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... resolved to join her noble husband upon these golden shores. Without informing him of her intention, she undertook the long journey, and arrived last week. The joy of the husband may be easier imagined than described. The meeting is said to have been indescribably affecting. We trust her example may ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... this time indescribably dirty, therefore betook itself to the Saracen's Head. The yard-method of attack having been successful at The Chequers was tried again here. Mr Peasemarsh was in the yard, and Robert opened the business in ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... as his firm and upright carriage served to indicate that his years could not yet exceed threescore, or thereabouts. There was an air of gravity and importance about the garb of the person, and something indescribably odd, I might say awful, in the perfect, stone-like stillness of the figure, that effectually checked the testy comment which had at once risen to the lips of the irritated artist. He, therefore, as soon as he had sufficiently ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... rich. The throne is at the upper end of the drawing room No. 5, and from the chimney of the room No. 3, the vista through the middle doors of the anti-drawing-rooms is about 200 feet!! Thecoup d'oeil must be indescribably grand, when all the three apartments are filled with rank and beauty. The ceilings of the principal rooms, 3, 4, and 5, are coved upon handsome cornices, carved and gilt. This gives the apartments a spacious and lofty appearance; and there being four large windows in each, the whole suite ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... woman stands naked, save for a wave of drapery above the knee. No form can he set on his sensations as he strolls, one blazing afternoon, along the Parisian boulevard and skips out of the way of the royal landau which, looking indescribably ramshackle, rattles along the pitted roadway, saluted by citizens of both sexes cheaply dressed in bowler hats and continental costumes; though a shepherd in kilt, cap, and gaiters very nearly drives his herd of goats between the royal wheels; and all the time the Acropolis surges into the air, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... lately. Poor pretty children! they have refined and sensitive faces as well as straight regular features; and the expression of the girl's countenance, as well as the sound of her voice, and the sad humility of her deportment, are indescribably touching. Mr. B—— expressed the strongest interest in and pity for them, because of their colour: it seems unjust almost to the rest of their fellow unfortunates that this should be so, and yet it is almost ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... an imagination vivid enough, or words graphic enough, to tell the power of that direct human touch. All life is athrill with its magic. Even when it becomes less direct, a bit removed from the personal, its power is indescribably great. ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... end of the path, sprang a furry gray creature, supple, fluffy, indescribably formless and immense ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... much anxiety, and the mind, no doubt, anticipates as much or more delight, than if they were assembled to see Charles Kemble, Young, and Macready, all three acting in one fine tragedy. There is something so indescribably odd and ridiculous about the whole paraphernalia of Mr. Punch, that we are irresistibly compelled to acknowledge the superiority of the lignum vito Roscius over the histrionic corps of mere flesh and blood. The eccentricity ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... on this leaflet. His finer senses were as shocked at the meeting as his taste was at the pamphlet. Mingled odors of tobacco-smoke, beer, human breath, and damp clothes filled the air; the people at the tables had an indescribably common stamp, unlovely manners, harsh, loud voices, and unattractive faces. They gossiped and laughed noisily, and coarse expressions were frequent. The earnest moral tone, the almost gloomy melancholy which Wilhelm had found so attractive in socialistic ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... time reached that latitude where perpetual summer reigns. The banks of the mighty Mississippi, which has for ages rolled on in increasing grandeur, present to the eye a wilderness of sombre scenery, indescribably wild and romantic. The bays, formed by the current, are choked with palmetto and other trees, and teem with alligators, water-snakes, and freshwater turtle, the former basking in the sun in conscious security. Overhead, pelicans, paroquets, and ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... club doors and the example set by the leisured class seemed copiously copied by those whom desks and shops had made prisoners all day. The air of the whole town, swarming with the nation that is supposed to make so grave an affair of its amusements, was indescribably gay and lighthearted; the whole city seemed set on enjoying itself. The buses that boomed along were packed inside and out, and each was placarded with advertisement of some popular piece at theatre or music-hall. Inside the Green Park the grass was populous with ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... awake—awake, and tempted with a great temptation. The porcupine—not ours, but the other one—had caught the fragrance of coffee and bacon. Here were new odors—different from anything that had ever before tickled his nostrils—strange, but indescribably delicious. He waited till the land-lookers were snoring, and then he started down the tree. Half-way to the ground he encountered the cloud of smoke that rose from the camp-fire. Here was another new ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... live very simply. The eating-rooms are used solely for eating, the "parlours" are always cheerful and tasteful, and the bedrooms very pretty, adorned with all manner of knick-knacks made by the ladies, who are indescribably deft with their fingers. Light Manilla matting is used instead of carpets. A Chinese man-cook, who leaves at seven in the evening, is the only servant, except in one or two cases, where, as here, a native woman condescends to come in during the day as a nurse. In the morning ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... deal to be said for such a course, though it went not a little against my grain. Raffles had changed his clothes and had a bath in town, to say nothing of his luncheon. I was by this time indescribably dirty and dishevelled, besides feeling fairly famished now that mental relief allowed a thought for one's lower man. Raffles had foreseen my plight, and had actually prepared a way of escape for me by the front door in broad daylight. I need not recapitulate the elaborate story he had told the ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... a moment. Then, when he spoke, his voice was lower and there was an indescribably sad note ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... in the sleeper, during the few days of his absence; how much thinner the hollow cheek, how sunken the closed eyes; how indescribably sharpened the outlines of each feature. The face which had formerly suggested some marble statue, had now the finer tracery as of an exquisite cameo; and oblivion of all earthly ills had set there the seal of a perfect peace. She lay so motionless, with her hands on her breast, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... returning traders. Much of the region they traversed may be aptly described in the language which Irving applies to Spain. "It is a stern melancholy country, with rugged mountains and long sweeping plains, indescribably lonesome, solitary, savage." After travelling nearly five hundred miles, about half the distance back to Missouri, they reached a ford of the Arkansas river. Here they met another party of traders bound to Santa Fe. Kit, who with great ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... open but empty. Gone was the Louis XVI snuff-box, gone was the miniature of Karl Huth, gone the piece of Bow China, and gone the Faberge cigarette case. Only the Queen Anne toy-porringer was there, and in the absence of the others, it looked to him, as no doubt it had looked to the burglar, indescribably insignificant. ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... to the twigs which form the boles of elm trees. Others still, with less ambitious span, went only from one blade of grass to another or united the thorns of whin bushes. The lower air, near the earth, was full of these threads. They formed an indescribably delicate net cast right over the fields and hills. I used to see them glistening, rainbow coloured when the sun rays struck them. Oftener I was aware of their presence only when my hands had touched and broken them or when they clung to my clothes, dragged from their fastenings ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... Bevilaquensis. 1494. Quarto. This is really one of the most covetable little volumes in the world. It is a copy printed UPON VELLUM; with most beautiful illuminations, in the purest Italian taste. Look—if ever you visit the Imperial Library—at the last illumination, at the bottom of o v, recto. It is indescribably elegant. But the binder should have been hung in chains. He has cut the book to the very quick—so as almost to have entirely sliced away several of the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... feeling for a moment that, notwithstanding the crowded room and Louis' attitude of polite attention, my life was in danger. There flashed something in his eyes indescribably venomous. I seemed to see there his intense and passionate desire to sweep me from ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... scenes in "As you like it." The brilliant sunlight, the green grass, the sparkling, murmuring Elv, the picturesque glen, the figures of the Laps, the moving herd of reins—the novelty of the whole was indescribably delightful. I found the reins did not make such a very loud, "clicking" noise as most travelers have asserted. Here were hundreds of reins striking their hoofs together, and yet the noise was certainly any thing but loud from their cloven feet ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... committee-man comes like Nemesis, aequo pede, the lesson is unlearned, and the stern-fibred little teacher orders out the rack known as staying after school. But what durance beyond hours in the indescribably desolate schoolroom ever taught mortal boy to shun the delusive insect created for his special undoing? So long as the heart has woes of its own breeding, so long also will it dodge the discipline of labor, and grasp at the flicker of an ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... rich yellow glass, through which the external light streams into the cave of the Sepulchre; and when the church itself is becoming dark, the effect produced by the light from the evening sky, passing through the deep-toned glass, and softly illuminating the Sepulchre, is indescribably solemn. ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... "you make it all indescribably hard for me. Will you not remember what has passed between us? I have the right to take my place ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Levite, closing the door of the store behind him, advanced with the indescribably weary step of a station man when the day is warm and the boss absent, and ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... part, I cannot remember anything agreeable in this raw little suburb. American life half a century ago had a great deal of rawness about it, and its external aspect was ugly beyond present belief. We may be a less virtuous nation now than we were then, but we are indescribably more good to look at. And the West Newton of to-day, as compared with that of 1851, will serve for an illustration ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... boy, almost a rugged-looking boy, and it is only I, knowing him as I do, who can fathom the sensibilities housed in that husky young body. There is a misty broodiness in his eyes which leaves them indescribably lovely to me as I watch him in his moments of raptness. But that look doesn't last long, for Dinkie can be rough in play and at times rough in speech, and deep under the crust of character I imagine I see traces of his Scottish ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... the edge of her bed waiting for the gharri to take her to the station; she had lunched and breakfasted in her bedroom, in fact she had lived there since her interview with the manager, which had been indescribably unpleasant for him, in that it had been so distressing to the gentle girl as she had sat and nodded her head and looked at him out ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... "vertigo of the infinite," when another door opened, and with a shock indescribable he found himself on the familiar level, in a street full of faces, with the houses and even the lamp-posts above his head. He felt suddenly happy and suddenly indescribably small. He fancied he had been changed into a child again; his eyes sought the pavement seriously as children's do, as if it were a thing with which something satisfactory could be done. He felt the full warmth of that pleasure from which the ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... both were indescribably odious, reminding Sofia of the creature Sturm; he had a laugh like that for her, on the rare occasion when chance propinquity encouraged the Boche to begin one of his uncouth ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... of the woman softened as she looked at June—softened indescribably. They read instantly the doubt and loneliness of the child. She threw the cigar into the street and moved swiftly toward the bride. A moment before she had been hard and sexless, in June's virgin eyes almost a monstrosity. Now she was all mother, ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... sensitive by the moderation of the light; and, to remove still further all disturbing causes, Lieutenant Walton had a sail and tarpaulin thrown over the mouth of the well. Underneath this I perched myself on the plank and watched the screw. In an indigo sea the play of colour was indescribably beautiful, and the contrast between the water, which had the screw-blades, and that which had the bottom of the ocean, as a background, was extraordinary. The one was of the most brilliant green, the other of the deepest ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... with the usual amount of gold braid;" but something far more interesting than the visit of any man, however famous, began to absorb the attention of our imprisoned hero at this time. He had never ceased to rack his brain with schemes looking to his escape. A life of captivity was indescribably wearisome to him. He not only taxed his own ingenuity in the effort to discover some feasible plan, but eagerly entered into the schemes of others. The result, however, so far as he was individually ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... with him, and his voice, which had gained much in depth and richness, was indescribably sweet. It seemed as if Mr. Fairland never would tire of hearing the brother and sister sing together. His mills and everything else were forgotten, while he sat silently in his great chair with his ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... extreme to all beholders. "His inmost soul seemed stung as by the bite of a serpent." When at last Mr. Sidney turned and took from his valise a small steel safe, which Conway recognized as his own, "the terrors of hell got hold of him," and his anguish was indescribably horrible. The little safe had been by some unknown and unaccountable process taken from a larger one in Conway's office, and was unopened. Neither Mr. Sidney nor the directors have ever seen its contents; but in consideration that it should not be opened, Mr. Conway confessed his crime in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... mountains peaks lifted their lofty heads against the sky and looked solemnly down upon the valley as of old; the great bird was poised aloft in the clear blue air, and the mountain wind came over the heights and blew refreshingly around the children as they sat on the sunlit slope. It was all indescribably enjoyable to Clara and Heidi. Now and again a young goat came and lay down beside them; Snowflake came oftenest, putting her little head down near Heidi, and only moving because another goat came and drove her away. Clara had learned to know them ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... forever. Those things, which have an imperishable value in being associated with his memory, are, to him, like the leaves of a past autumn to a tree now filled with blossoms. The mention of every valued possession once indescribably dear to him, would awaken but slight emotions; even the recent history of the dwelling which he built and furnished, would be no more to him than the rehearsal to a grown person of that which had happened to a block house, or card ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... These tendencies, while they should not be resisted too much, since they give character to observation and redeem it from the frigidity of mechanics, should be resisted to a certain extent. For, whatever they may be, they favour the growth of sentimentality, the protean and indescribably subtle enemy ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... The scene looked indescribably desolate, and yet there was a certain beauty in it, too. I had been told exactly how to reach the House by the Lock, and when, after passing the somewhat weedy-looking lock, I began skirting along a species of backwater, and came in sight of a long, low-browed house ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... soldier, who had never said a gentle word to an inferior, replied in an indescribably sweet and affectionate voice, "I am only a captain; you are ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... tactfully hinted at the presentable appearance, the wealth and blind devotion of Akim and finally mentioned so significantly the wishes of their mistress that Dunyasha went out of the room with a look of hesitation on her face and meeting Akim only gazed intently into his face and did not turn away. The indescribably lavish presents of the love-sick man dissipated her last doubts. Lizaveta Prohorovna, to whom Akim in his joy took a hundred peaches on a large silver dish, gave her consent to the marriage, and the marriage took place. Akim spared no ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Vanderstraten, all Lieutenants on the staff, who had been its denizens during occupation. Though their tenure was brief they had made the most of their time. The place was gutted, carpets torn up, tapestry torn down, and pictures destroyed. It was also indescribably filthy. This may have been the work of the soldiery after the departure of ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... about from place to place in the neighbourhood of Beauval and between it and the Somme. It stands greatly to the credit of the Battalion's fitness and discipline that not a man fell out during all those marches in the rain over indescribably ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... orchestra of the Opera Comique, and the best performers from the Italian opera. The solos were sung by Mesdames Grimm and Couraud, and by Bassine and Chapuis, the latter being one of the best tenors in the city. Some of the quartettes, with accompaniments of harps and wind instruments, were indescribably beautiful. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... windy, wintry noon. The rocky spires, pinnacles, and domes, glowing with gorgeous golden light, and the lower ranges, shaded with hazy blue, umber-red, and luminous purple, fell into picture and formed prospects indescribably pure and pellucid. But the average of the aneroid (29.19) gave an altitude of eight hundred feet; and even in this submaritime region, the minimum temperature was 42 deg. F., ranging to a maximum of 85 deg F. in the shade. These are extremes which the soft Egyptian body, reared in the house ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... it, he praised me to the skies. This was a figure, as I have said, chiselled on a plate of gold; Atlas had the heaven upon his back, made out of a crystal ball, engraved with the zodiac upon a field of lapis-lazuli. The whole composition produced an indescribably fine effect; and under it ran the legend 'Summa tulisse juvat!' [3] Federigo was so thoroughly well pleased that he paid me very liberally. Aluigi Alamanni was at that time in Florence. Federigo Ginori, who enjoyed his friendship, brought him often to my workshop, ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... features which gave to them their charm; but in the young man there was infinitely more than this, though effeminate as was his complexion, and the bright sunny curls which floated over his throat, he was eminently and indescribably beautiful, for it was the mind, the glorious mind, the kindling spirit which threw their radiance over his perfect features; the spirit and mind which that noble form enshrined stood apart, and though he knew ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... gash or scar that ran from the chief's right eye—a dull, fishlike eye, evidently destroyed by that wound—down across the leathery cheek, across the prognathous jaw; a reddish-purple wale, which on that clay-blue skin produced an effect indescribably repulsive. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... very good. You cannot see the river till you are right upon it, owing to the great trees with which its steep banks are fringed, and in the early morning it is quite hidden from bank to bank by a dense mass of billows of white mist, indescribably strange to ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... he studied through his almost opaque defenses that indescribably ravening fireball, that esuriently rapacious monstrosity which might very well have come from the deepest pit of the hottest hell of mythology, felt strongly inclined to agree with Carlowitz. It didn't seem possible that anything could ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... silly thing down," I told him, as he ran up to me with his head lowered and that indescribably desperate look in his big frightened eyes. "If you're not a fool I can get you hidden," I told him. It reassured me to see that his knees were shaking much more than mine, as he stood there in the center of the shack! I stooped over the trap-door ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... used by Father Beret in his sermons and prayers; but something went with it indescribably touching. Farnsworth felt a lump rise in his throat and his eyes were ready to show tears. "Father," he said, with difficulty making his words distinct, "I would not harm Miss Roussillon to save my own life, and I would do anything—" he paused slightly, ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... wonderful how this inward cheerfulness almost counteracted her bodily fever. She felt merely tired—indescribably tired; and she was half-pleased and half-sorry when she saw the foreman greasing the wheels of the Bernese chaise-wagon, and heard that her master was going to ride out with the stranger immediately. She hurried into the kitchen, and there ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... distract her mind from the noises over the hedge. But every head-line seemed to dart at her sore consciousness as if it were a snake's head with a sting in it. Murder. Unrest. Strikes. Dissatisfactions. Change. The whole outlook was indescribably comfortless and depressing to her. She felt something akin to the vague, apprehensive misery—beyond reason or common sense—which people feel during the rumble of ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... have taken our native Asters in hand, and we now have several varieties that make themselves perfectly at home in the border. Some of them grow to a height of eight feet. Others are low growers. The rosy-violet kinds and the pale lavender-blues are indescribably lovely. Nearly all of them bloom very late in the season. Their long branches will be a mass of flowers with fringy petals and a yellow centre. These plants have captured the charm of the Indian ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... indescribably ignorant you are!" Edi remarked compassionately. "He died more than a thousand years ago. But big Churi, the leader of the Middle Lotters, our enemies, is Hannibal. But you see, I just remember something: Churi is not a real Hannibal, for he was a great ...
— Erick and Sally • Johanna Spyri
... could barely see Margot, although he held her hand. He could barely see Vardin although they stood hand in hand too. The music was un-Earthly, incapable of repetition, indescribably the loveliest sound he had ever heard. He wanted to sink down into the obscuring gray murk and weep and listen to the haunting, sad, ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance
... on one face, now on another. The dripping rustle of the rain among the leaves, and the clear, ceaseless tick of the clock on the mantel-piece, made the minute of silence which followed the settling of the persons present in their places indescribably oppressive. It was a relief to every ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... made me incapable of any other thought or attention but such as pointed to the coming journey. All circumstances in travelling, all scenes and situations of a representative and recurring character, are indescribably affecting, connected, as they have been, in so many myriads of minds, more especially in a land which is sending off forever its flowers and blossoms to a clime so remote as that of India, with heart-rending separations, and with farewells never to be repeated. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... color, they are nearly reddish-blue, purple or violet, according to the density of the ether, but when we view any object with the spiritual sight pertaining to the Desire World, it scintillates and coruscates in a thousand ever changing colors so indescribably beautiful that they can only be compared to living fire, and the writer therefore calls this grade of vision color sight, but when the spiritual vision of the World of Thought is the medium of perception, the seer finds that in addition to still more beautiful ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... Mersch, on his arm was an old lady to whom he seemed to pay deferential attention. His head was bent on one side; he was smiling frankly. A little behind them, on the stairway, there was a space. Perhaps I was mistaken; perhaps there was no space—I don't know. I was only conscious of a figure, an indescribably clear-cut woman's figure, gliding down the way. It had a coldness, a self-possession, a motion of its own. In that clear, transparent, shimmering light, every little fold of the dress, every little shadow of the white arms, the white shoulders, came up to me. The face turned ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... in the opening—an indescribably dirty, unutterably weary face, with matted white hair and a rime of whitish beard stubble on the jaws. It was fallen in and sunken and it drooped on the chest of its owner. The mouth, swollen and pulpy, as if from repeated hard blows, hung agape, and between ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... a silence quite unnatural over the place. The distant murmur of the brook, which he knew so well, was dead; not a whisper in the leaves about him; the air, earth, everything about and above was indescribably still; and he experienced that quaking of the heart that seems to portend the approach of something awful. He would have set out upon his return across the moor, had he not an undefined presentiment that he was waylaid by something he ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... Pao-yue was indescribably joyous, and, as he raised his head, he perceived that the text on the tablet consisted of the three characters: the Board of Ill-fated lives; and that on each side was ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... leaves, grass, twigs, and wisps of straw fell fluttering from it to the ground. It was a pathetic and yet wonderful sight, beauty, happiness, and peace about it somewhere, together with a soft and tender sweetness that tempered the wildness of its aspect. Indescribably these qualities proclaimed themselves. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... two hours' fast marching we had made the distance, say, from the clubhouse to the second hole. Then we camped in a genuinely little grove of really small trees overlooking a green valley bordered with wooded hills. The prospect was indescribably delightful; a sort of Sunday-morning landscape of groves and green grass and a feeling ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... garrulous chatter, and the horrid purport of it, were to me indescribably ghastly. To hear such things told without tremor or emphasis or other emotion than the sullen faces of his two strapping sons—to hear these incredible horrors babbled by an old man whose fate might be the same that very night, affected me with such an ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... armour, and the skin of some animal was thrown about the brawny shoulders of such as had not replaced their barbaric mantles with the Roman military cloak; the hair of each, black or red, but always long and indescribably filthy, was caught up in a knot at the top of the head, whence it streamed away, loose or matted, like the tail of an unkempt horse; their feet were bare, and their legs were covered by linen breeches bound ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... would have is already his:—he was the friend of Janus and my own," she answered in a tone of surprise that was almost indignant. And then, with a lingering on the words that was indescribably pathetic, she added: ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Boswelliana of Sydney; not very clerical, you will say, but indescribably amusing to the hearers, whatever the readers may think of them. Nothing can present a more striking contrast to his rapid, loud, laughing utterance, and his rector-like amplitude and rubicundity, than the low, slow, emphatic tone, and the corpse-like face of Rogers. There is ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan |
